ording to she."

Ishmael followed his mother into the ugly room, which offended his eyes,
used as they were to the Parson's taste. An album lay on the floor, and
he stooped to pick it up, but his mother, quick for all her years and
rheumatism, was before him and had thrust it out of his reach.

Tea was a stiff meal; everyone was on company manners. John-James, in
from stabling the mare, sat at the edge of a chair; Vassie was too
genteel, Phoebe too arch, Annie grim. Ishmael's heart sank with a
terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with
whom his lot was cast--that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day
out, all the round of the seasons.... Vassie's beauty seemed dimmed to
him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave
off tinkling out the same tune. He bent his head lower as he sat, aware,
with a misery of shame, that tears were burning perilously near his
eye-lids. Life was sordid, and his position, over which he had not been
guiltless of sometimes dreaming as romantic, held nothing but
mortification and hatefulness.

The meal dragged on; the daylight without grew glamorous. Conversation
flickered and died, and at last Ishmael, pushing his chair back with a
noise that sounded horrible to himself, announced his intention of going
to the Vicarage. Annie muttered something about people who could not be
content to stay at home even on their first evening....

But he was not allowed to escape alone; Phoebe discovered that it was
time she was going back to the mill, and there was no evading an offer
to accompany her.

Somehow, away from the others, and out in the open, Phoebe seemed to
shed the commonness that had blighted her at that dreadful tea. She
still coquetted, but it was with a fresh and dewy coquetry as of some
innocent woodland creature that displays its charms as naturally as it
breathes. Ishmael found himself pleased instead of irritated when he
received her weight as he helped her over the stone steps at each
stile--for the only girl he had seen much of in late years had been
wont to stretch out a strong hand to guide him.

As they went over the marsh where they had so often played as children
they vied with each other in pointing out memorable spots, and the
gaiety of the old days mingled with the beauty of the present evening to
brighten his spirits. The marsh was all pied with white--pearly white of
blowing cotton-grass; thick, deader white of wate