she is?"

She pointed toward Duck Rock. "Oh, I suppose she's over there. She was
to have picked the cucumbers this morning, but I see she hasn't done
it."

"Has Mr. Fay told you what the trouble is?"

"Well, he has. But then he's so romantic. Always was. Land's sake! I
don't pay any attention to young people's goings-on. Seen too much of it
in my own day. I don't say that the young fellow hasn't been
foolish--and I don't say--you'll excuse me!--that Rosie ain't just as
good as he is, even if he _is_ Archie Masterman's son--"

"Oh no, nor I," Lois hastened to interpose.

"But there's nothing wrong. I've asked her--and I _know_. I'm sure of
it."

Lois spoke eagerly. "Oh yes; so am I."

"So that there's that." She went on with a touch of her old haughtiness
of spirit: "And she's every mite as good as he is. It's all nonsense,
Fay's talking as if it was some young lord who'd jilted a girl beneath
him. Young lord, indeed! I'll young lord him, if he ever comes my way. I
tell Rosie not to demean herself to grieve for them that are no better
than herself. It's nothing but romantics," she explained further. "I've
no patience with Fay--talking as if some one ought to shoot some one or
commit murder. That's the way Matt began. Fay ought to know better at
his time of life. I declare he has no more sense than Rosie."

Lois had not expected to be called upon to defend Fay, but she said, "I
suppose he naturally feels indignant when he sees--"

"There's a desperate streak in Fay," the woman broke in, uneasily, "and
Rosie takes after him. For the matter of that, she takes after us
both--for I'm sure I've been gloomy enough. There's been something
lacking in us all, like cooking without salt. I see that now as plain as
plain, though I can't get Fay to believe me. You might as well talk to a
stone wall as talk to Fay when he's got his nose stuck into a book. I
hate the very name of that Carlyle; and that Darwin, he's another.
They're his Bible, I tell him, and he don't half understand what they
mean. It's Duck Rock," she went on, with a quiver of her fine lips,
while her hands worked nervously at the corner of her apron--"it's Duck
Rock that I'm most afraid of. It kind o' haunted me all the time I was
sick; and it kind o' haunts Rosie."

"Then I'll go and see if she's there," Lois said, as she turned away,
leaving the austere figure to stare after her with eyes that might have
been those of the woman delivered from the seven