r
haste, as if she had somehow done it wrong, and Lizzie Ann had gone to
Cap'n Hanscom's. Mariana had hesitated on the doorstone, at her leaving,
and there the cap'n bade her good-by, rather piteously and with
finality, though they were to be neighbors still.

"Well, Eben," she hesitated. There was something she had meant to say.
In spite of decency, in spite of feminine decorum, she had intended to
give him a little shove into the path that should lead him, still
innocently, to her own blazonment as a woman who could have her little
triumphs like the rest. "If you should ever feel to tell Lizzie Ann I
was a good housekeeper," she meant to say, "I should be obliged to you."
He would do it, she knew, and from that prologue more would follow. The
cap'n would go on to say he had besought her to marry him, never
guessing, under Lizzie Ann's superior system of investigation, that he
had disclosed himself at all. But as she mused absently on his face,
another spirit took possession of her, the one that had presided over
her humble hearth and welcomed the two men there in the neighborly
visits that seemed so pleasant in remembrance. What did it avail that
this or that woman should declare she was unsought? She was ashamed of
waging that unworthy war. She found herself speaking without
premeditation.

"You know what Lizzie Ann West says about you?"

"She ain't said she won't come?" He was dismayed and frankly terrified.

"She says you're dreadful spruce-lookin' and you're younger'n ever you
was."

The cap'n laughed.

"That all?" he inquired. "Well, she must be cross-eyed."

"No," said Mariana, "she ain't cross-eyed; only she thinks you're a
terrible likely man."

Then she walked away, and the cap'n watched her, blinking a little with
the sun in his eyes and the memory of her Indian pudding.

Mariana did not find her house just as she had left it. It seemed to her
a warmer, lighter, cleaner place than she had ever thought it, and, in
spite of the winter's closing, as sweet as spring. She went about
opening cupboard doors and looking at her china as if each piece were
friendly to her, from long association, and moving the mantel ornaments
to occupy the old places more exactly. Certain eccentricities of the
place had been faults; now they were beauties wherein she found no
blemish. The worn hollows in the kitchen floor, so hard to wash on a
Monday, seemed exactly to fit her feet. And while she stood with her
elbows on