hopes and the same downfall,
yet through those hours in the little white-washed bed-room, with the
locust boughs tapping against the window, the memory that I strenuously
put away of that warm clasp, of the new tenderness in the voice that had
called me by my name, softened the sharp pangs of disappointment; and
he, at least, would not fail as I had done.

Toward sunset I laid away my dead book, and went down to the
sitting-room where Mrs. Hopper sat placidly mending. She looked a trifle
anxiously at my reddened eyelids. "Feel well?" she queried, plying the
needle swiftly. "You mustn't let things prey onto your mind," she
admonished, "or you won't get your money's worth of good out of the
place, and besides, Lord! what is there worth worryin' over, any how?
Money ain't worth it, and love ain't worth it," she declared, with a
keen glance at me. "But, there, what _is_ the use of tellin anybody
that? I worried some before I married Pa. I guess it's natural. I
thought, thinks I, 'Mary Ann Bishop, he's years older'n you, 'n' he's
weakly, 'n' there ain't much doubt but what you'll be left a relic'. Now
look, that was ten years ago, and Pa ain't no more out o' slew 'n' he
was then. 'N' then I thought, 'There, he's had one wife.' (Pa was a
widower.) ''N' I expect he'll be always a-comparin' of us.' It ain't
happened once, at least, not out loud, an' oh! how good he was to that
woman! It didn't seem as if he _could_ be as good to his second. It was
all over the place," said Mrs. Hopper laying down "Pa's" calico shirt,
and speaking in low and impressive tones, as befits the subject of
death, "how he bought her a bran-new wig two weeks before she died, an'
he let her be buried in that wig, that cost over thirty dollars! An' as
for a stone! Well, there, he went over to Gilsey's marble-yard to New
Sidon, 'n' picked out a sixty-dollar tomb, 'n' never asked 'm to heave
off a cent! An' that man, Miss Marriott," said Mrs. Hopper, "he'd do
just as well by me as ever he done by her, 'n' I'm contented, 'n' I'm
happy. I can tell you, I'm a believer in marriage," she said, with a
proud smile, as she rose to get tea.

Mr. Longworth brought over a neat package of manuscript that evening,
which I sent, with a letter to Mr. ----. We sat talking on the porch,
watching the moon rise and flood the dew-wet fields with a tide of white
radiance. Occasionally we heard Mr. or Mrs. Hopper in the lamp-lit
sitting-room making brief comments on neighborho