ays it, I can see his natty cane beginning to lengthen itself
out in his soft-skinned hand and to send out teeth like a muck-rake. Give
Mr. Brisk another thirty years or so and he will be an ancient churl,
raking to himself the sticks and the straws and the dust of the earth,
neither looking up to nor regarding the celestial crown that is still
offered to him in exchange for his instrument.

"Now, Mercy was of a fair countenance, and, therefore, all the more
alluring." But her fair countenance was really no temptation to her.
"Sit still, my daughter," said Naomi to Ruth in the Old Testament. And
it was entirely Mercy's maidenly nature to sit still. Even before she
had come to her full womanhood under Christiana's motherly care she would
have been an example to Ruth. Long ago, while Mercy was still a mere
girl, when Mrs. Light-mind said something to her one day that made her
blush, Mercy at last looked up in real anger and said, We women should be
wooed; we were not made to woo. And thus it was that all their time at
the House Beautiful Mercy stayed close at home and worked with her needle
and thread just as if she had been the plainest girl in all the town. "I
might have had husbands afore now," she said, with a cast of her head
over the coat that lay on her lap, "though I spake not of it to any. But
they were such as did not like my conditions, though never did any of
them find fault with my person. So they and I could not agree." Once
Mercy's mouth was opened on the subject of possible husbands it is a
miracle that she did not go on in confidence to name some of the husbands
she might have had. Mercy was too truthful and too honourable a maiden
to have said even on that subject what she did say if it had not been
true. No doubt she believed it true. And the belief so long as she
mentioned no names, did not break any man's bones and did not spoil any
man's market. Don't set up too prudishly and say that it is a pity that
Mercy so far forgot herself as to make her little confidential boast. We
would not have had her without that little boast. Keep-at-home,
sit-still, hats and hosen and all--her little boast only proves Mercy to
have been at heart a true daughter of Eve after all.

There is an old-fashioned word that comes up again and again in the
account of Mr. Brisk's courtship,--a word that contains far more interest
and instruction for us than might on the surface appear. When Mr. Brisk
was rallied