do you mean?" asked Anne, a little sharply. She was in
the pantry counting eggs, and Octavia's interruption made her lose her
count. "Now I can't remember whether it was six or seven dozen I said
last. I shall have to count them all over again. I wish, Octavia, that
you could think of something besides beaus all the time."

"Well, but listen," persisted Octavia wickedly. "Jerome Irving was at
the social at the Cherry Valley parsonage last night, and he had
Harriet Warren there--took her there, and drove her home again."

"I don't believe it," cried Anne, before she thought. She dropped an
egg into the basket so abruptly that the shell broke.

"Oh, it's true enough. Sam Mitchell told me; he was there and saw him.
Sam says he looked quite beaming, and was dressed to kill, and
followed Harriet around like her shadow. I guess you won't have any
more bother with him, Aunt Anne."

In the process of picking the broken egg out of the whole ones Anne
had recovered her equanimity. She gave a careful little laugh.

"Well, it's to be hoped so. Goodness knows it's time he tried somebody
else. Go and change your dress for milking, Octavia, and don't spend
quite so much time gossiping up the lane with Sam Mitchell. He always
was a fetch-and-carry. Young girls oughtn't to be so pert."

When the subdued Octavia had gone, Anne tossed the broken eggshell out
of the pantry window viciously enough.

"There's no fool like an old fool. Jerome Irving always was an idiot.
The idea of his going after Harriet Warren! He's old enough to be her
father. And a Warren, too! I've seen the time an Irving wouldn't be
seen on the same side of the road with a Warren. Well, anyhow, I don't
care, and he needn't suppose I will. It will be a relief not to have
him hanging around any longer."

It might have been a relief, but Anne felt strangely lonely as she
walked home alone from prayer meeting the next night. Jerome had not
been there. The Warrens were Methodists and Anne rightly guessed that
he had gone to the Methodist prayer meeting at Cherry Valley.

"Dancing attendance on Harriet," she said to herself scornfully.

When she got home she looked at her face in the glass more critically
than she had done for years. Anne Stockard at her best had never been
pretty. When young she had been called "gawky." She was very tall and
her figure was lank and angular. She had a long, pale face and dusky
hair. Her eyes had been good--a glimmering hazel, large