ooking heavenward while she
worked, yet they caught no beam, no colour from her celestial visions.
Small hectic blotches burned in the centre of her cheeks, and her
thin lips were pressed tightly together as though she bit back a cry.
Sometimes she would remain dumb for an hour in his presence, while her
thoughts soared like birds in the blue region of dreams. She indulged
her imagination in grotesque but intoxicating reveries, in which she
passed nobly and with honour through a series of thrillingly romantic
adventures; and, in fact, only ten minutes before Abel's arrival, she
had beheld herself and the young clergyman undergoing a rapturous, if
slightly unreal, martyrdom, as missionaries to the Chinese.

Her dreams dropped suddenly, with broken wings, in their flight, for
her stepmother, a small sickly woman, with a twisted smile, looked out
through the dining-room window, and remarked facetiously:

"You all don't look much like a co'tin couple to my eyes."

"I've been admiring her butter," replied Abel, who was always unduly
regardful of his English in the presence of Mrs. Hatch.

"She's a good hand at butter when she chooses to be, but she has her ups
and downs like the rest of us."

"All of us have them, I suppose," he rejoined, and Mrs. Hatch drew in
her head.

"I never imagined that you got put out, Judy," he said, forgetting the
tears that had led him to his sacrifice; "you always seem so quiet and
sober."

She glanced up, for there was a sound of wheels on the road, and Mr.
Mullen drove by again, sitting very erect, and uncovering, with a
graceful bend, to some one who was visible at the front. Her face
flushed suddenly to the colour of the brickdust, and she felt that
the confusion in her soul must fill the universe with noise. Quiet and
sober, indeed, if he could only have heard it!

But Abel was busy with his own problems, while his gaze followed Mr.
Mullen's vanishing back, which had, even from a distance, a look of
slight yet earnest endeavour. He still liked the young rector for his
sincerity and his uprightness, but he had found, on the whole, that he
could approach his God more comfortably when the straight and narrow
shadow of the clergyman did not come between.

"Aren't you going to pat it any more?" he asked presently, returning to
his consideration of the butter.

Picking up a square linen cloth, Judy dipped it into a basin of brine,
and, after wringing it out, carefully folded it over t