e sitting-room sofa, where she had felt of the pillows, and the
lambrequin which hung from the long shelf where the clock and vasts stood,
on the opposite side of the room. "Bet she don't put on no airs about me
just the same." She looked at the small bookcase below the mantel in a
perfect rage of envy. Elizabeth was surrounded by the things which
befitted Elizabeth, and Sadie realized as she had never done in their
childhood the chasm which separated them, and knew nothing of the anguish
of the young wife as she laboured with the disfigured pies, nor that
Elizabeth thought of the look of love she had seen Sadie receive with
something very like envy in her heart.

Elizabeth thought long upon the joy in Luther's face as he greeted her.
John must have made some move about the request for help which covered the
neglect of all these months adequately to Luther. Sadie finished her
inspection of the inner regions and returned to the kitchen primed with
things to be said to her rival, and Elizabeth fared badly at her hands.
Her innate refinement would not let Elizabeth strike back in the coarse
way in which she was attacked, and she listened to hints and pretended
sympathy on the subject of Farnshaw domestic difficulties, of reported
debts which John Hunter had contracted, and neighbourhood estimates of the
fact of her own secluded manner of life since her marriage, till her head
swam and her memory was scorched for many a day. But though her head ached
and her knees almost refused to perform their office, Elizabeth remained
in the kitchen and superintended every dish prepared for that harvest
dinner. The fact that the pies had scorched left her with the feeling that
John had had a foundation of real fact for his demand that she give them
her personal attention, and left her humbled and ready to beg forgiveness.
Every fibre of her cried out for the trust she had seen in Luther's glance
at Sadie. _There_ was true marriage, and the state which she laboured
daily to establish.

At dinner John did not look at Elizabeth, though her eyes sought his
constantly, and when the pie was passed around she remarked on its trimmed
edges shamefacedly.

Silas Chamberlain wiped his knife on a piece of bread and slid it under
the section nearest him.

"You never mind about them edges. It looks like a good pie t' me, an' John
here will eat his share of it, I'll warrant you. Th' rest of this company
can survive if he does. I just been a thinkin