smile, and
said: "Deal gently with Brother Abram, Temperance."

"Brother be fiddlesticked!" she said tartly. "Miss Morgeson, _do_ you
want some quinces?"

"Certainly."

"We'll make hard marmalade this year, then. You shall have the quinces
to-morrow." And she retired with a softened face. I was told that
Abram Handy was a widower anxious to take Temperance for a second
helpmeet, and that she could not decide whether to accept or refuse
him. She had confessed to mother that she was on the fence, and didn't
know which way to jump. He was a poor, witless thing, she knew; but
he was as good a man as ever breathed, and stood as good a chance
of being saved as the wisest church-member that ever lived! Mother
thought her inclined to be mistress of an establishment over which she
might have sole control. Abram owned a house, a garden, and kept pigs,
hens, and a cow; these were his themes of conversation. Mother could
not help thinking he was influenced by Temperance's fortune. She was
worth two thousand dollars, at least. The care of her wood-lot,
the cutting, selling, or burning the wood on it, would be a supreme
happiness to Abram, who loved property next to the kingdom of heaven.
The tragedy of the old man's life was the loss of his only son, who
had been killed by a whale a year since. The _Adamant_, the ship he
sailed in, had not returned, and it was a consoling hope with Abram
that his boy's chist might come back.

"We heard of poor Charming Handy's death the tenth of September, about
three months after Abram began his visits to Temperance," Veronica
said.

"Was his name Charming?" I asked.

"His mother named him," Abram said, "with a name that she had picked
out of Novel's works, which she was forever and 'tarnally reading."

"What day of the month is it, Verry?"

"Third of October."

"What happened a year ago to-day?"

"Arthur fell off the roof of the wood-house."

"Verry," he cried, "you needn't tell my sister of that; now she knows
about my scar. You tell everything; she does not. You have scars," he
whispered to me; "they look red sometimes. May I put my finger on your
cheek?"

I took his hand, and rubbed his fingers over the cuts; they were not
deep, but they would never go away.

"I wish mine were as nice; it is only a little hole under my hair.
Soldiers ought to have long scars, made with great big swords, and I
am a soldier, ain't I, Cassy?"

"Have I heard you sing, Cassy?" asked father. "Come