iness, as if she
had a secret to think over, and a solving of perplexities.

Isabel Martin dropped out of her place, where she had been talking with
Andrew Hall, and, forgetting in her haste the consistency of her part,
ran over to her. Isabel, out of her abiding mischief, had dressed
herself for a dullard's part. She had thought at first of being an old
witch-woman and telling fortunes, but instead she had put on pious black
alpaca and a portentous cap, and dropped her darting glances. To Andrew
Hall, who was a portly Quaker in the dress of uncle Ephraim long since
dead, she seemed as sweet as girlhood and as restful as his own mother.
Andrew had been her servitor for almost as many years as they had lived;
but she had so flouted him, so called upon him for impossible
chivalries, out of the wantonness of her fancy, that he had sometimes
confided to himself, in the darkest of nights when he woke to think of
her, that Isabel Martin was enough to make you hang yourself, and he
wished he never had set eyes on her. Yet she was the major part of his
life, and Andrew knew it. Now he followed her more slowly, and was by at
the instant of her saying,--

"O Ellen, you couldn't go over across the orchard, could you, an' see if
Maggie L.'s got the water boilin' for the coffee? I'm 'most afraid to go
alone."

Ellen, waking from her dream, looked at her and smiled. She knew
Isabel's tender purposes. This was meant to take her away from curious
though tolerant eyes and give her a moment to wipe out the world of
dreaming for the world of men.

"No," she said softly. "You don't need to."

"You let me go," said Andrew gallantly. "I can see if it's bilin' an'
come back an' tell ye."

"You!" said Isabel, abjuring her disguise, to rally him. "You'd be
afraid. Come, Ellen."

She linked an arm in Ellen's, and falling at once into her part of sober
age, paced with her from the hall. Andrew, constrained in a way he
hardly understood himself, was following them, but in their woman's
community of silent understanding they took no notice of him. Outside,
the night was soft and welcoming, unreal after the light and color, an
enchanted wilderness of moonlight splendor. They had crossed the road to
the bench under the old poplar, and there Ellen sat down and drew a
breath of excitement and gladness to be free to think. The moonlight
seemed still brighter, sifting down the sky-spaces, and the two women
together looked up at it through the po