feat with right
philosophy. It was a just fix for a man to find himself in,--a proper
punishment for a mean act. Arguing thus, from the right side of the
hedge, he forgot what wiser men have forgotten, that there is no
disputing about man's affection for woman, there is no transposition of
the standpoint, there is no looking through another's eyes upon a girl.
Many have loved, and many have rendered vivid pictures of the emotion,
touched with insight of genius and universally proclaimed true to nature
from general experience; but no two men love alike, and neither you nor
another man can better say how a third feels under the yoke, estimate
his thrall, or foretell his actions, despite your own experience, than
can one sufferer from gout, though it has torn him half a hundred times,
gauge the qualities of another's torment under the same disease. Will
could not guess what John Grimbal had felt for Phoebe; he knew nothing
of the other's disposition, because, young in knowledge of the world and
a boy still, despite his age, it was beyond him to appreciate even
remotely the mind of a man fifteen years older than himself--a man of
very different temper and one whose life had been such as we have just
described.

Home went Blanchard, and kept his meeting secret. His mother, returning
long before him, was already in some argument with Chris concerning the
disposal of certain articles of furniture, the pristine splendour of
which had been worn off at Newtake five-and-thirty years before. At
Farmer Ford's death these things passed to his son, and he, not
requiring them, had made them over to Damaris.

"They was flam-new when first my parents married and comed to Newtake,
many a year ago; and now I want 'em to go back theer. They've seed three
generations, an' I'd be well pleased that a fourth should kick its li'l
boots out against them. They 'm stout enough yet. Sweat went to building
of chairs an' tables in them days; now it's steam. Besides, 'twill save
Will's pocket a tidy bit."

Chris, however, though she could deny Will nothing, was divided here,
for why should her mother part from those trifles which contributed to
the ample adornment of her cottage? Certain stout horsehair furniture
and a piano were the objects Mrs. Blanchard chiefly desired should go to
Newtake. The piano, indeed, had never been there before. It was a
present to Damaris from her dead husband, who purchased the instrument
second-hand for five pounds at