d
granny Jacobs hadn't lost what little wit she ever had, it 'ud be very
soon seen whether Madam White's got the right to say who's to come and
who's to go in that house. It's a nasty old yaller shell anyhow, not to
say nothin' o' it's bein' haunted, 's like 's not. But there ain't no
other place so handy to the mill for us, an' I guess our money's good ez
any lawyer's money, o' the hull on 'em any day. Mill people, indeed! I'll
jest give Steve White a piece o' my mind, the first time I see him on the
street."

Jane and her lover were sitting on the tops of two barrels just outside
the grocery door, when this conversation took place. Just as the last
words had left her lips, she looked up and saw Stephen approaching at a
very rapid pace. The unusual sight of two people perched on barrels on the
sidewalk roused Stephen from the deep reverie in which he habitually
walked. Lifting his hat as courteously as if he were addressing the most
distinguished of women, he bowed, and said smiling, "How do you do, Miss
Jane?" and "Good-morning, Mr. Lovejoy," and passed on; but not before Jane
Barker had had time to say in her gentlest tones, "Very well, thank you,
Mr. Stephen," while an ugly sneer spread over the face of Reuben Lovejoy.

"Woman all over!" he muttered. "Never saw one on ye yet thet wasn't
caught by a bow from a palaverin' fool."

Jane laughed nervously. She herself felt ashamed of having so soon given
the lie to her own words of bravado; but she was woman enough not to admit
her mortification.

"I know he's a palaverin' fool's well's you do; but I reckon I've got some
manners o' my own, 's well's he. When a man bids me a pleasant
good-mornin', I ain't a-goin' to take that time to fly out at him, however
much I've got agin him."

And Reuben was silenced. The under-current of ill-feeling against Stephen
and his mother went steadily on increasing. There is a wonderful force in
these slow under-currents of feeling, in small communities, for or against
individuals. After they have once become a steady tide, nothing can check
their force or turn their direction. Sometimes they can be traced back to
their spring, as a stream can: one lucky or unlucky word or deed, years
ago, made a friend or an enemy of one person, and that person's influence
has divided itself again and again, as brooks part off and divide into
countless rivulets, and water whole districts. But generally one finds it
impossible to trace the like or dis