iance with her wishes, but she had not counted upon the absence of
her lover's mother, who had gone to Ohio shortly after his departure and
decided to remain there with a married daughter. There was no one left
in the neighborhood who could expect to hear directly from Lloyd, and
the reports that came from other members of the party he had joined
told little that poor Marg'et Ann wished to know, beyond the fact that
he was well and had suffered the varying fortunes of other gold-hunters.

There were moments of bitterness in which she tried to picture to
herself what her life might have been if she had braved her parents'
disapproval and married Lloyd before her mother's death; but there was
never a moment bitter enough to tempt her into any neglect of present
duty. The milking, the butter-making, the washing, the spinning, all the
relentless hard work of the women of her day, went on systematically
from the beginning of the year to its end, and the younger children came
to accept her patient ministrations as unquestioningly as they had
accepted their mother's.

She wondered sometimes at her own anxiety to know that Lloyd was true to
her, reproaching herself meanwhile with puritanic severity for such
unholy selfishness; but she discussed the various plaids for the
children's flannel dresses with Mrs. Skinner, who did the weaving, and
cut and sewed and dyed the rags for a new best room carpet with the same
conscientious regard for art in the distribution of the stripes which
was displayed by all the women of her acquaintance; indeed, there was no
one among them all whose taste in striping a carpet, or in "piecing and
laying out a quilt," was more sought after than Marg'et Ann's.

"She always was the old-fashionedest little thing," said grandmother
Elliott, who had been a member of Mr. Morrison's congregation back in
Ohio. "I never did see her beat." The good old lady's remark, which was
considered highly commendatory, and had nothing whatever to do with the
frivolities of changing custom, was made at a quilting at Squire
Wilson's, from which Marg'et Ann chanced to be absent.

"It's a pity she don't seem to get married," said Mrs. Barnes, who was
marking circles in the white patches of the quilt by means of an
inverted teacup of flowing blue; "she's the kind of a girl _I'd_ 'a'
thought young men would 'a' took up with."

"Marg'et Ann never was much for the boys," said grandmother Elliott,
disposed to defend her favorit