, but had bravely won
her way, paid her debts, and provided the three girls and their
brother Tobias with the best available schooling.

For a woman of such good judgment and high purpose in life,
Mrs. Bascom had made a very unwise choice in marrying Tobias Bascom
the elder. He was not even the owner of a good name, and led her a
terrible life with his drunken shiftlessness, and hindrance of all her
own better aims. Even while the children were babies, however, and
life was at its busiest and most demanding stages, the determined soul
would not be baffled by such damaging partnership. She showed the
plainer of what stuff she was made, and simply worked the harder and
went her ways more fiercely. If it were sometimes whispered that she
was unamiable, her wiser neighbors understood the power of will that
was needed to cope with circumstances that would have crushed a weaker
woman. As for her children, they were very fond of her in the
undemonstrative New England fashion. Only the two eldest could
remember their father at all, and after he was removed from this world
Tobias Bascom left but slight proofs of having ever existed at all,
except in the stern lines and premature aging of his wife's face.

The years that followed were years of hard work on the little farm,
but diligence and perseverance had their reward. When the three
daughters came to womanhood they were already skilled farmhouse
keepers, and were dispatched for their own homes well equipped with
feather-beds and homespun linen and woolen. Mercy Bascom was glad to
have them well settled, if the truth were known. She did not like to
have her own will and law questioned or opposed, and when she sat down
to supper alone with her son Tobias, after the last daughter's
wedding, she had a glorious feeling of peace and satisfaction.

"There's a sight o' work left yet in the old ma'am," she said to
Tobias, in an unwontedly affectionate tone. "I guess we shall keep
house together as comfortable as most folks." But Tobias grew very red
in the face and bent over his plate.

"I don' know's I want the girls to get ahead of me," he said
sheepishly. "I ain't meanin' to put you out with another wedding right
away, but I've been a-lookin' round, an' I guess I've found somebody
to suit _me_."

Mercy Bascom turned cold with misery and disappointment. "Why T'bias,"
she said, anxiously, "folks always said that you was cut out for an
old bachelor till I come to believe it, an'