brothers and sisters younger than herself
all considerations for her personal ease were forgotten. Ten years
passed and her father was no more; than gradually, one after another,
the family she had so patiently reared took wing, leaving Celestina a
lonely spinster of fifty, homeless and practically penniless.

This cruel lack of responsibility on the part of her relatives resulted
less from a want of affection than from a supreme misunderstanding of
their older sister. So completely had Celestina learned to efface her
personality and her inclinations that they reasoned she was utterly
without preferences; that she lacked the homing instinct; and was quite
as happy in one place as in another. Having thus washed their hands of
her they proceeded to sell the Morton homestead and each one pocket his
share of the proceeds. Very scanty this inheritance was, so scanty
that it compelled Celestina to begin a rotation around the village,
where in return for shelter she filled in domestic gaps of various
kinds. She helped here, she helped there; she took care of babies,
nursed the sick, comforted the aged. On she moved from house to house,
no enduring foundation ever remaining beneath her feet. No sooner
would she strike her roots down into a congenial soil than she would be
forced to pluck them up again and find new earth to which to cling.

She might have married a dozen times during her youth had not her
conscience deterred her from deserting her father and the children left
to her care. In fact one persistent swain who refused to take "No" for
an answer had begged Celestina to wait and pray over the matter.

"I never trouble the Lord with things I can settle myself," replied she
firmly. "I can't go marryin' an' that's all there is to it."

Other offers had been declined with the same characteristic firmness
until now the golden season of mating-time was past, and although she
was still a pretty little woman the stamp of spinsterhood was
unalterably fixed upon her.

Wilton, in the meantime, had long ago lost sight of the uncomplaining
self-sacrifice it had previously lauded and explained Celestina
Morton's unwedded state by declaring that she was too "easy goin'" to
make anybody a good wife. This criticism came, perhaps, more loudly
from the female faction of the town than from the male. However that
may be, the stigma, merited or unmerited, had become so firmly branded
upon Celestina that it could not be effaced