eighteen
hours, He can't ever do it."

At ten o'clock her work was done, and she established herself by the
sitting-room window, her knitting in hand, to watch for him who was to
come. A warm excitement flooded through her veins.

"How my heart beats!" she said aloud. It had hurried through the peril
of Willard's illness and the disaster of his death. It was hurrying now,
as if it meant to gallop with her from the world.

At half-past ten there was the sound of wheels. She dropped her knitting
and put her hand up to her throat. A carriage turned the bend in the
road and passed the clump of willows. It was the minister's wife,
driving at a good pace and leaning out to bow. Hetty rose, trembling,
her hand on the window-sill. But the minister's wife gave another
smiling nod and flicked the horse. She was not the messenger.

Hetty sank back to her work, and knit with trembling fingers. The
forenoon wore on. It was Candlemas, and cloudy, and she remembered that
the badger would not go back into his hole. There would be an early
spring. Then grief caught her again by the throat, at the thought that
spring might come, and summer greaten, but she was a stricken woman
whose joy would not return. She rose from her chair and called out
passionately,--

"Only one flower, jest one sprig o' suthin', an' I'll be contented!"

That day she had no dinner. She made it ready, with a scrupulous
exactitude, but she could not eat. She went back to her post at the
window. Nobody went by. Of all the neighbors who might have driven to
market, not one appeared. Life itself seemed to be stricken from her
world. At four o'clock she caught her shawl from its nail, and ran
across the field to Lucy. Both sisters were at home, in the still
tranquillity of their pursuits, Lucy knitting and Caroline binding
shoes. Hetty came in upon them as if a wind had blown her.

"Law me!" said Caroline, looking up. "Anything happened?"

"No," said Hetty, "nothin' 's happened. I don't know as 't ever will."

She sat down and talked recklessly about nothing. A calla bud, yesterday
a roll of white, had opened, and the sun lay in its heart. Hetty set her
lips grimly, and refused to look at it. Yet, as her voice rang on, the
feverish will within her kept telling her what she might say. She might
ask for the well-being of the slip set out yesterday, or she might even
venture, "I should think you'd move your calla out o' the sun. Won't it
wilt the bloom?" Then Lu