red.

"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"
interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the
hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously
in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to
relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.

"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced
cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"
And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he
caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,
seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for
breath, leaned against the well-curb.

"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and
was drawing him toward the house.

"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take
care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket
he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the
field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of
the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away
to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't
we?"

"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set
a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper
shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.

"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock
she was knitting.

"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."

But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to
her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy
feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was
gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for
supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used
to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was
ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the
easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't
want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been
sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"

And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who
had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white
fingers,--his own fields