just then, Ivory thought, and her love was
so deep that when it was uprooted the soil came with it. Now hope had
returned because the cruel memory had faded altogether. She sat by the
kitchen window in gentle expectation, watching, always watching.

And this is the way many of Ivory Boynton's evenings were spent, while
the heart of him, the five-and-twenty-year-old heart of him, was longing
to feel the beat of another heart, a girl's heart only a mile or more
away. The ice in Saco Water had broken up and the white blocks sailed
majestically down towards the sea; sap was mounting and the elm trees
were budding; the trailing arbutus was blossoming in the woods; the
robins had come;-everything was announcing the spring, yet Ivory saw
no changing seasons in his future; nothing but winter, eternal winter
there!

V. PATIENCE AND IMPATIENCE

PATTY had been searching for eggs in the barn chamber, and coming down
the ladder from the haymow spied her father washing the wagon by the
well-side near the shed door. Cephas Cole kept store for him at meal
hours and whenever trade was unusually brisk, and the Baxter yard was so
happily situated that Old Foxy could watch both house and store.

There never was a good time to ask Deacon Baxter a favor, therefore this
moment would serve as well as any other, so, approaching him near enough
to be heard through the rubbing and splashing, but no nearer than was
necessary Patty said:--

"Father, can I go up to Ellen Wilson's this afternoon and stay to tea? I
won't start till I've done a good day's work and I'll come home early."

"What do you want to go gallivantin' to the neighbors for? I never saw
anything like the girls nowadays; highty-tighty, flauntin', traipsin',
triflin' trollops, ev'ry one of 'em, that's what they are, and Ellen
Wilson's one of the triflin'est. You're old enough now to stay to home
where you belong and make an effort to earn your board and clothes,
which you can't, even if you try."

Spunk, real, Simon-pure spunk, started somewhere in Patty and coursed
through her blood like wine.

"If a girl's old enough to stay at home and work, I should think she
was old enough to go out and play once in a while." Patty was still too
timid to make this remark more than a courteous suggestion, so far as
its tone was concerned.

"Don't answer me back; you're full of new tricks, and you've got to stop
'em, right where you are, or there'll be trouble. You were whistlin'