under the Bowerly apple-tree.

She shared Marg'et Ann's room that night, and after she had taken off
her lace headdress and put a frilled nightcap over her lonesome little
knot of gray hair and said her prayers, she composed herself on her
pillow with a patient sigh, and lay watching Marg'et Ann crowd her
burnished braids into her close-fitting cap without speaking; but after
the light was out, and her companion had lain down beside her, the old
maid placed her knotted hand on the girl's more shapely one, and said:--

"There's worse things than living single, Marg'et Ann, and then again I
suppose there's better. Of course every girl has her chances, and the
people we make sacrifices for don't always seem quite as grateful as we
calculated they'd be. I'm not repinin', but I sometimes think if I had
my life to live over again I'd do different."

Marg'et Ann pressed the knotted fingers, that felt like a handful of
hickory nuts, and touched the little circle with its two worn-out
hearts, but she said nothing.

She had heard that the Rev. Samuel McClanahan was going to marry the
youngest Groesbeck girl, now that his children were "getting well up out
of the way," and she knew that her mother had been telling Miss Nancy
something about her own love affair with Lloyd Archer.

Whatever Mrs. Morrison may have confided to Miss Nancy McClanahan
concerning Marg'et Ann and her lover must have been entirely
suppositional and therefore liable to error; for the confidence between
parent and child did not extend into the mysteries of love and marriage,
nor would the older woman have dreamed of intruding upon the sacred
precinct of her daughter's feelings toward a young man. She had remarked
once or twice to her husband that she was afraid sometimes that there
was something between Lloyd Archer and Marg'et Ann; but whether this
something was a barrier or a bond she left the worthy minister to
divine.

That he had decided upon the latter was evidenced, perhaps, by his reply
that he hoped not, and his fear, which he had expressed before, that
Lloyd was getting more and more settled in habits of unbelief; and Mrs.
Morrison took occasion to remark the next day in her daughter's hearing
that she would hate to have a child of hers marry an unbeliever.

Marg'et Ann did not, however, need any of these helps to an
understanding of her parents' position. She knew too well the danger
that was supposed to threaten him who indulged in vain and