ven noticed two or
three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him:
a way of throwing her head back when she was amused, as if to taste her
laugh before she let it out, and a trick of sinking her lids slowly when
anything charmed or moved her.

The sight made him unhappy, and his unhappiness roused his latent fears.
His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie, but of late she had
grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of
attracting attention to the girl's inefficiency. Zeena had always been
what Starkfield called "sickly," and Frome had to admit that, if she
were as ailing as she believed, she needed the help of a stronger arm
than the one which lay so lightly in his during the night walks to the
farm. Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping, and her training had
done nothing to remedy the defect. She was quick to learn, but forgetful
and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously. Ethan had
an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant
instinct would wake, and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the
county; but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her. At first
she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her; but she
laughed with him and that made them better friends. He did his best to
supplement her unskilled efforts, getting up earlier than usual to light
the kitchen fire, carrying in the wood overnight, and neglecting the
mill for the farm that he might help her about the house during the day.
He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after
the women had gone to bed; and Zeena, one day, had surprised him at the
churn and had turned away silently, with one of her queer looks.

Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour, as intangible but
more disquieting. One cold winter morning, as he dressed in the dark,
his candle flickering in the draught of the ill-fitting window, he had
heard her speak from the bed behind him.

"The doctor don't want I should be left without anybody to do for me,"
she said in her flat whine.

He had supposed her to be asleep, and the sound of her voice had
startled him, though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after
long intervals of secretive silence.

He turned and looked at her where she lay indistinctly outlined under
the dark calico quilt, her high-boned face taking a grayish tinge from
the whiteness of the pillow.

"Nobody to d