board, doggedly, even sulkily, at first, and then suddenly armed with
that quiet acceptance he had ready for all the changes in his life. But
Mariana smoothed his path to a pleasant familiarity with the big house
and its ways, and he began to look about the room, from his place at the
table with his book or paper, wonderingly and even pathetically, as she
thought, recalling the time before his sister died when his own house
had been full of the warm intimacies of an ordered life. The captain
reveled in the comfort of his state. He brought in wood until Mariana
had to bid him cease. He built fires and drew water, and his ruddy face
shone with contentment. She made his favorite dishes and seemed not to
notice when Jake, too, in his shy way, awoke to praise them. She even
read aloud to the cap'n on a Sunday night from the life of women who,
the title declared, debatably, had "Made India what It is." On such
nights of intellectual stress Jake betook himself to the kitchen and
ostentatiously pored over the "Scout in Early New England." The cap'n,
who was hospitality itself, trudged out there one night, in the midst of
a panegyric on Mrs. Judson, and besought him to come in.

"If you don't like that kind o' readin', Jake, we'll try suthin' else,"
he conceded generously. "I jest as soon play fox an' geese Sunday nights
if anybody wants to. I ain't one to tie up the cat's tail Sunday mornin'
so 's she won't play."

"I'll be in byme-by," said Jake, frowningly intent upon his page. "You
go on with your readin', cap'n. I'll be in."

But, instead, he walked out and down the road to his own lonely house,
and Mariana, though her brain followed him every step of the way, went
on reading in the clearest voice, minding her stops as she had been
taught when she was accounted the best reader in the class. But in those
days of reading-classes her heart had not ached. It ached all the time
now. She had shut the gate behind her, and the one she opened led into
an unfamiliar country. Mariana had been born to live ingenuously,
simply, like the child she was. Woman's wiles were not for her, and the
fruit they brought her had a bitter tang. But whether her campaign was a
righteous one or not, it was brilliantly successful. She could hardly
think that any women, looking on, were laughing at her, even in a
kindly way. She had taken her own stand and the world had patently
respected it. Immediately on her moving to the cap'n's she had gone out