with her own. And thus it was that the farmhouse
gradually changed its appearance both outwardly and in, for young
womanhood which had but one glimpse of the outer world will not settle
down quietly amid fashions a century old. And Lucy Lennox, when she
returned to the farmhouse, was not quite the same as when she went away.
Indeed, Aunt Betsy in her guileless heart feared that she had actually
fallen from grace, imputing the fall wholly to Lucy's predilection for
a certain little book on whose back was written "Common Prayer," and at
which Aunt Betsy scarcely dared to look, lest she should be guilty of
the enormities practiced by the Romanists themselves. Clearer headed
than his sister, the deacon read the black-bound book, finding therein
much that was good, but wondering why, when folks promised to renounce
the pomps and vanities, they did not do so, instead of acting more stuck
up than ever. Inconsistency was the underlying strata of the whole
Episcopal Church, he said, and as Lucy, without taking any public step,
had still declared her preference for that church, he, too, in a
measure, charged her propensity for repairs to the same source with Aunt
Betsy; but, as he could really see no sin in what she did, he suffered
her in most things to have her way. But when she contemplated an attack
upon the huge chimney occupying the center of the building, he
interfered; for there was nothing he liked better than the bright fire
on the hearth when the evenings grew chilly and long, and the autumn
rain was falling upon the roof. The chimney should stand, he said; and
as no amount of coaxing could prevail on him to revoke his decision, the
chimney stood, and with it the three fireplaces, where, in the fall and
spring, were burned the twisted knots too bulky for the kitchen stove.
This was fourteen years ago, and in that lapse of time Lucy Lennox had
gradually fallen in with the family ways of living, and ceased to talk
of her cottage in Western New York, where her husband had died and where
were born her daughters, one of whom she was expecting home on the warm
July day when our story opens.

Kate, or Katy Lennox, our heroine, had been for a year an inmate of
Canandaigua Seminary, whither she was sent at the expense of a distant
relative to whom her father had been guardian, and who, during her
infancy, had also had a home with Uncle Ephraim, her mother having
brought her with her when, after her husband's death, she returned