r getting
married, would they?" he asked, as she stood beside him.

"Oh, no, they wouldn't stand in the way," faltered poor Marg'et Ann.

How could she explain to this muscular fellow, whose pale-faced mother
had no creed but what Lloyd thought or wanted or liked, that it was
their unspoken grief that made it hard for her? How shall any woman
explain her family ties to any man?

Marg'et Ann did not need to consult her father. He looked up from his
writing when she entered the door.

"Was that Lloyd Archer, Marg'et Ann?" he asked kindly.

"Yes, sir."

"I'd a little rather you wouldn't go with him. He seems to be falling
into a state of mind that is likely to end in infidelity. It troubles
your mother and me a good deal."

Marg'et Ann went into the bedroom to take off her riding skirt, and she
did not come out until she was sure no one could see that she had been
crying.

Mrs. Morrison continued to complain all through the fall; at least so
her neighbors said, although the good woman had never been known to
murmur; and Marg'et Ann said nothing whatever about her engagement to
Lloyd Archer.

Late in October Archie Skinner and Rebecca were married and moved to the
Martin Prather farm, and Lloyd, restless and chafing under all this
silence and delay, had no longer anything to suggest when Marg'et Ann
urged her mother's failing health as a reason for postponing their
marriage.

Before the crab-apples bloomed again Mrs. Morrison's life went out as
quietly as it had been lived. There was a short, sharp illness at the
last, and in one of the pauses of the pain the sick woman lay watching
her daughter, who was alone with her.

"I'm real glad there was nothing between you and Lloyd Archer, Marg'et
Ann," she said feebly; "that would have troubled me a good deal. You'll
have your father and the children to look after. Nancy Helen will be
coming up pretty soon, and be some help; she grows fast. You'll have to
manage along as best you can."

The girl's sorely troubled heart failed her. Her eyes burned and her
throat ached with the effort of self-control. She buried her face in the
patchwork quilt beside her mother's hand. The woman stroked her hair
tenderly.

"Don't cry, Marg'et Ann," she said, "don't cry. You'll get on. It's the
Lord's will."

The evening after the funeral Lloyd Archer came over, and Marg'et Ann
walked up the lane with him. She was glad to get away from the Sabbath
hush of the house, which the nei