sks (and if Nancy would take them--but that was
the trouble, women were so unselfish, they were always willing to take
risks, and one ought not to let them!), perhaps he might do better in
trying to make a living for two than he had in working for himself alone.
He would go home, tell Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and
ask her if she would try her hand at making him over.

CHAPTER VI

These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood on the
Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new tavern
on Tory Hill, near the Meeting-House.

Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and
after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk,
aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending
to call on some of his old neighbours, with the view of hearing the
village news and securing some information which might help him to decide
when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy Wentworth's
feet. They were pretty feet! He remembered that fact well enough under
the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and odours. He was
restless, miserable, anxious, homesick--not for Detroit, but for some
heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan's shepherd boy in the Valley
of Humiliation, he carried "the herb called Hearts-ease in his bosom,"
for he was at last loving consciously.

How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds! It must have
been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly
prosperous. There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he
remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the
change. Did the chimney use to be in that corner? No; but his father
had always said it would have drawn better if it had been put there in
the beginning. New shingles within a year: that was evident to a
practised eye. He wondered if anything had been done to the inside of
the building, but he must wait until the morrow to see, for, of course,
the doors would be locked. No; the one at the right side was ajar. He
opened it softly and stepped into the tiny square entry that he recalled
so well--the one through which the Sunday-school children ran out to the
steps from their catechism, apparently enjoying the sunshine after a
spell of orthodoxy; the little entry where the village girls congregated
while waiting for the last bell to ring--they made a