ress Abby, but she does stop my happiness, Mardie.
That's the second time to-day, for she took Moses away from me when I
was kissing him because he pinched his thumb in the window."

"Why did you do that, Sue?" remonstrated her mother softly, remembering
Ansel's proximity. "You never used to kiss strange little boys at home
in Farnham."

"Moses isn't a boy; he's only six, and that's a baby; besides, I like
him better than any little boys at home, and that's the reason I kissed
him; there's no harm in boy-kissing, is there, Mardie?"

"You don't know anybody here very well yet; not well enough to kiss
them," Susanna answered, rather hopeless as to the best way of
inculcating the undesirability of the Adamic plane of thought at this
early age. "While we stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful to
do exactly as the Shakers do."

By this time mother and child had reached the orchard end of a row, and
Brother Ansel was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more of the
information with which his mind was always teeming.

"Them Boston people that come over to our public meetin' last Sunday,"
he began, "they was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o' the human
race if it should all turn Shakers. 'I guess you needn't worry,' I says;
'it'll take consid'able of a spell to convert all you city folks,' I
says, 'an' after all, what if the world should come to an end?' I says.
'If half we hear is true 'bout the way folks carry on in New York and
Chicago, it's 'bout time it stopped,' I says, 'an' I guess the Lord
could do a consid'able better job on a second one,' I says, 'after
findin' out the weak places in this.' They can't stand givin' up their
possessions, the world's folks; that's the principal trouble with 'em!
If you don't have nothin' to give up,--like some o' the tramps that
happen along here and convince the Elder they're jest bustin' with the
fear o' God,--why, o' course 't ain't no trick at all to be a Believer."

"Did you have much to give up, Brother Ansel?" Susanna asked.

"'Bout's much as any sinner ever had that jined this Community," replied
Ansel, complacently. "The list o' what I consecrated to this Society
when I was gathered in was: One horse, one wagon, one two-year-old
heifer, one axe, one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bedding, four
turkeys, eleven hens, one pair o' plough-irons, two chains, and eleven
dollars in cash.--Can you beat that?"

"Oh, yes, _things_!" said Susanna, absent-mindedly