not to see it, her eyes were caught by a black-and-white print in
a gilt frame, called "The First Steps." How she had loved the picture
when she was a little girl; her mother had explained it to her many
times--the bird teaching its little ones to fly; the big, shaggy dog
encouraging its waddling puppies; the mother coaxing her baby to walk
alone.

At midnight Abbie got out of bed, picked up the dinner-bell by the
clapper, and went back up-stairs to the South bedroom.

The tall, bare walls of the big house, the high ceilings with their
centerpieces of plaster fruits and flowers, the cold whiteness, closed
her in. Having no one to talk to, she talked to herself: "It's snowin'
hard out----why! that was what Old Chris said the night before he went
away." She began to be troubled by a queer, detached feeling; she knew
that she had mislaid something, but just what she could not remember.
Forebodings came to her, distressing, disquieting. There would never be
any one for her to speak to--never! The big house grew terrible; the
rooms echoed her steps. She would have given everything for a little
house of two or three small, low-ceilinged rooms close to the sidewalk
on a street where people passed up and down.

A night came when Abbie forgot that Old Chris had gone away. She had
been sitting in her chair beside the marble-topped table, staring out
into the night. All day the wind had blown; snow was piled high around
the porch. Her thoughts had got back to her childhood. Somehow they had
centered around the old grandfather who, years before, had sat in the
same window. She saw him in his chair; heard his raspy old voice, "I
married Jane sixty-eight an' a half years ago, an' a half year in a
man's life is something, I'll bet you. An' I buried her thirty years
ago, an' that's a long time, too. We never tore each other's shirts.
Jane wanted to live a quiet life. She wanted one child, an' she was
tenacious 'bout that. She never wanted any more, an' she had three, an'
one of 'em was your Ma. She never wanted to be seen out with a baby in
her arms, Jane didn't. I made her get bundled up once or twice, an' I
hitched up the horse an' took her ridin' in my phaeton that cost two
hundred dollars.--You'll be in your dotage some day, Abbie. I've been in
my dotage for years now.--Oh, I altered my life to fit Jane's. I
expected I had a wife to go out and see the neighbors with. By gosh! we
never went across the street--I'll take on goodness