berry-bushes,
wintergreen, blackberry-vines, and sweet ferns; dainty, fragrant, crowded
ovals, lovelier than any florist could ever make; white and green in the
spring, when the cornels were in flower; scarlet and green and blue in the
autumn, when the cornels and the blueberries were in fruit.

Mercy was sitting on a mound which was thick-grown with the shining
wintergreen. She picked a stem which had a cluster of red berries on it,
and below the berries one tiny pink blossom. As she held it up, the
blossom fell, leaving a tiny satin disk behind it on its stem. She took
the bell and tried to fit it again on its place; then she turned it over
and over, held it up to the light and looked through it. "It makes me
sad," she said: "I wish I knew if the flower knows any thing about the
fruit. If it were working to that end all the while, and so were content
to pass on and make room, it would seem all right. But I don't want to
pass on and make room! I do so like to be here!"

Parson Dorrance looked from one woman's face to the other, both young,
both lovely: Lizzy's so full of placid content, unquestioning affection,
and acceptance; Mercy's so full of mysterious earnestness, far-seeing
vision, and interpretation.

"What a lot lies before that gifted creature," he said to himself, "if
life should go wrong with her! If only I might dare to take her fate into
my hands! I do not believe any one else can do for her what I could, if I
were only younger." And the Parson sighed.

That night he stayed in Penfield at Lizzy's house. The next morning, on
his way to Danby, he stopped to see Mercy for a moment. When he entered
her door, he had no knowledge of what lay before him; he had not yet said
to himself, had not yet dared to say to himself, that he would ask Mercy
to be his wife. He knew that the thought of it was more and more present
with him, grew sweeter and sweeter; yet he had never ceased resisting it,
saying that it was impossible. That is, he had never ceased saying so in
words; but his heart had ceased resisting long ago. Only that traitor
which we call judgment had been keeping up a false show of resolute
opinion, just to lure the beguiled heart farther and farther on in a
mistaken security.

But love is like the plants. It has its appointed days for flowers and for
the falling of the flowers. The vague, sweetness of the early hours and
days together, the bright happiness of the first close intimacy and
interchange,-