e quid of tobacco in his mouth
reflectively, "the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug
that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able
to cope with! P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o' Providence. Mebbe it shows
you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an' take to raisin' live stock!"

Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but stock
that has within itself the power of being "live" has also rare
qualifications for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did
suit Justin's stock. It proved prone not only to all the general
diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.
At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on
the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled
themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that
they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.

These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin
Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized
some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor, helpless
way.

Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and
Nancy had cleaned all the paint. Now she sat in the old Peabody pew
darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as
grey as her own life.

The scrubbing-party had moved to its labours in a far corner of the
church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket
luncheons. Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory. Long years ago
she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of
sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at
eighteen, "finished," she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody
herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended
service.

Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and
maiden joy.

Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since
grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with
pleasure at the nearness. Was there not a summer morning when his hand
touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the
lines of the

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace,

became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable
for a full minute