found your poster
waistcoats."

"Why do you persist is misunderstanding and hurting me?"

"I apologize to your waistcoats, Mr. Sanderson. I have long considered
them the substitute for your better nature."

"Better natures and that sort of thing have rather gone out of style,
haven't they?"

"They are always out of style with people who never had them."

"Is this quarreling, Kate, or making love?"

"Oh, let's make it quarreling, Mr. Sanderson. And now about that horse
you lent me. That's a vile bit you've got on him." And the
conversation turned to other things, as it always did when he tried to
be sentimental with Kate. Sometimes he thought it was not the girl,
but her resistance, that he admired so much.

Things in the Bartlett household were getting a bit uneasy. The Squire
chafed that his cherished project of Kate and Dave's marrying seemed no
nearer realization now than it had been two years ago.

Dave's equable temper vanished under the strain and uncertainty
regarding Anna Moore's silence and apparent indifference to him. He
would have believed her before all the world; her side of the story was
the only version for him; but Anna did not see fit to break her
silence. When he would approach her on the subject she would only say:

"Mr. David, your father employs me as a servant. I try to do my work
faithfully, but my past life concerns no one but myself."

And Dave, fearing that she might leave them, if he continued to force
his attentions on her, held his peace. The thought of losing even the
sight of her about the house wrung his heart. He could not bear to
contemplate the long winter days uncheered by her gentle presence.

It was nearly Thanksgiving. The first snow had come and covered up
everything that was bare and unsightly in the landscape with its
beautiful mantle of white, and Anna, sitting by the window, dropped the
stocking she was darning to press the bitter tears back to her eyes.

The snow had but one thought for her. She saw it falling, falling soft
and feathery on a baby's grave in the Episcopal Cemetery at Somerville.
She shivered; it was as if the flakes were falling on her own warm
flesh.

If she could but go to that little grave and lie down among the
feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this
eternal struggle to live. What had life in store for her? There was
the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the crushing
knowledge