, to see if he
looked ill or disturbed. Sarah Barnard, during all absences of her
family, dug busily at imaginary pitfalls for them; had they all
existed the town would have been honey-combed.

"There ain't nothin' happened, has there, Cephas?" she said.

"I dunno of anythin' that's happened."

"I got kind of worried. I didn't know where you was." Sarah had an
air of apologizing for her worry. Cephas made no reply; he did not
say where he had been, nor account for his tardiness; he did not look
at his wife, standing before him with her pathetically inquiring
face. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, and Charlotte
set his supper before him. It was a plate of greens, cold boiled
dock, and some rye-and-Indian bread. Cephas still adhered to his
vegetarian diet, although he pined on it, and the longing for the
flesh-pots was great in his soul. However, he said no more about
sorrel pies, for the hardness and the flavor of those which he had
prepared had overcome even his zeal of invention. He ate of them
manfully twice; then he ate no more, and he did not inquire how Sarah
disposed of them after they had vainly appeared on the table a week.
She, with no pig nor hens to eat them, was forced, with many
misgivings as to the waste, to deposit them in the fireplace.

"They actually made good kindlin' wood," she told her sister Sylvia.
"Poor Cephas, he didn't have no more idea than a baby about makin'
pies." All Sarah's ire had died away; to-night she set a large plump
apple-pie slyly on the table--an apple-pie with ample allowance of
lard in the crust thereof; and she felt not the slightest exultation,
only honest pleasure, when she saw, without seeming to, Cephas cut
off a goodly wedge, after disposing of his dock greens.

"Poor father, I'm real glad he's tastin' of the pie," she whispered
to Charlotte in the pantry; "greens ain't very fillin'."

Charlotte smiled, absently. Presently she slipped into the best room
and lighted the candles. "You expectin' of anybody to-night?" her
mother asked, when she came out.

"I didn't know but somebody might come," Charlotte replied,
evasively. She blushed a little before her mother's significantly
smiling face, but there was none of the shamed delight which should
have accompanied the blush. She looked very sober--almost stern.

"Hadn't you better put on your other dress again, then?" asked her
mother."

"No, I guess this 'll do."

Cephas ate his pie in silence--he h