in her best cashmere and made a series of calls, and far and wide she
had gayly announced herself as keeping house because she wanted the
money; in the spring, she told the neighborhood, she meant to take what
she had earned and make a journey to Canada to see cousin Liddy, who had
married into a nice family there, and over and over again had written
for her to come.

"I guess Eben Hanscom never'll let you step your foot out of his house
now he's tolled you into it," Lizzie Ann West remarked incisively one
afternoon, when Mariana, after a pleasant call on her, stood in the
doorway, saying the last words the visit had not left room for. "He
ain't goin' to bite into such pie-crust as yours, day in, day out, and
go back to baker's trade."

"I don't make no better pie-crust'n you do," said Mariana innocently.

"Mebbe you don't, but you're on the spot, and there's where you've got
the whip-hand. Eben Hanscom ain't goin' to let you go. He's no such
fool."

"Well," flashed Mariana, "I'd like to see anybody keep me when I've got
ready to go." She was on the doorstep now, and the spring wind was
bringing her faint, elusive odors. She felt like putting her head up in
the air like a lost four-footed creature and snuffing for her home.

"Oh, I guess you'll be glad enough to stay," said Lizzie Ann, with a
shrewdness Mariana hated. "The cap'n's takin' to clippin' his beard.
He's a nice-lookin' man, younger by ten years than he was when she's
alive, and neat 's a pin."

Mariana chose her way back along the muddy road, choking a temptation to
turn the corner to her own little house, build a fire there, and let
single men fight the domestic battle for themselves. But that night when
the spring wind was still moving and she stood on Cap'n Hanscom's
doorstone and looked at the dark lilac buds at her hand, the tears came,
and the cap'n, bearing in his last armful of wood for the night, saw
them and was undone. He went in speechlessly and piled the wood with
absent care. He stood a moment in thought, and then he called her.

"Mariana, you come here."

She went obediently.

"You ain't homesick, be you?" the cap'n inquired.

She nodded, like a child.

"I guess so," she responded. "Leastways, if 'tain't that I don't know
what 'tis."

The cap'n was looking at her pleadingly, all warm benevolence and
anxious care.

"I know how 'tis," he burst forth. "You've give up your home to come
here, an' you feel as if you hadn't anything o