far
upon the road.

When Mrs. Withington came home with her basket of greens, Ellen had
supper all ready, and she ran forward and held a corner of her mother's
apron while they walked together toward the house.

"You look kind o' peaked," said Mrs. Withington tenderly. "What you got
on that old brown thing for?"

"I'm going to weed after supper," Ellen answered. "The garden looks real
bad."

Mrs. Withington gazed at her keenly.

"Henry Fox asked if we were goin' to be home this evenin'," she said,
with much indifference. "I told him I guessed so."

Ellen held the apron hard.

"O mother!" she whispered; "you see him. I haven't got to, have I?"

"Law! no, child," said the other woman. "I guess you ain't. You're
mother's own girl."

So when the dusk came Mrs. Withington sat in the parlor and talked of
crops with Henry, wan beside her, while Ellen, safe at the back of the
house, weeded a bed of pansies purpling there. A soft after-glow lighted
all the windows to flame, and fell full upon the face of one dark
flower, quite human in its sombre wistfulness. Ellen knelt and kissed
it tremulously.

"You darling one!" she murmured under her breath; and somehow she knew
that this was the only sort of kiss she should ever want to give.

THE AUCTION

Miss Letitia Lamson sat by the open fire, at a point where she could
easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and
Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker.
No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the
managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege.
The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly
dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart
of its own charring; and that Miss Letitia never resented. She herself
was gentle and persuasive with a fire; but the cap'n's more impetuous
method seemed to belong to him, and she understood, without much
thinking about it, that when he blustered a little, even over a
hard-working blaze, it was because he must. He was a tempestuously
organized creature, of a martial front and a baby heart, most fortunate
in his breadth of shoulder, his height, and the readiness of the
choleric blood to come into his cheeks, the eagerness of his husky voice
to bluster.

These outward tokens of an untrammeled spirit helped him to hold his own
among his kind, though his oldest friend, Miss Letty, prize