had lived. She regretted his
loss deeply, however; it was impossible for her to speak of him, even
to intimate friends, without emotion, and nobody had ever hinted that
this emotion was insincere. She was most warm-hearted and generous,
and in her limited way played the part of Lady Bountiful in the town
of Hampden.

"Why, there's where the Bray girls lives, ain't it?" she exclaimed,
as, beyond a thicket of witch-hazel and scrub-oak, they came in sight
of a weather-beaten, solitary farmhouse. The barn was too far away for
thrift or comfort, and they could see long lines of light between the
shrunken boards as they came nearer. The fields looked both stony and
sodden. Somehow, even Parsley itself could be hardly more forlorn.

"Yes'm," said Miss Wright, "that's where they live now, poor things. I
know the place, though I ain't been up here for years. You don't
suppose, Mis' Trimble--I ain't seen the girls out to meetin' all
winter. I've re'lly been covetin'"--

"Why, yes, Rebecca, of course we could stop," answered Mrs. Trimble
heartily. "The exercises was over earlier 'n I expected, an' you're
goin' to remain over night long o' me, you know. There won't be no tea
till we git there, so we can't be late. I'm in the habit o' sendin' a
basket to the Bray girls when any o' our folks is comin' this way, but
I ain't been to see 'em since they moved up here. Why, it must be a
good deal over a year ago. I know 't was in the late winter they had
to make the move. 'T was cruel hard, I must say, an' if I hadn't been
down with my pleurisy fever I'd have stirred round an' done somethin'
about it. There was a good deal o' sickness at the time, an'--well, 't
was kind o' rushed through, breakin' of 'em up, an' lots o' folks
blamed the selec'_men_; but when't was done, 't was done, an' nobody
took holt to undo it. Ann an' Mandy looked same's ever when they come
to meetin', 'long in the summer,--kind o' wishful, perhaps. They've
always sent me word they was gittin' on pretty comfortable."

"That would be their way," said Rebecca Wright. "They never was any
hand to complain, though Mandy's less cheerful than Ann. If Mandy 'd
been spared such poor eyesight, an' Ann hadn't got her lame wrist that
wa'n't set right, they'd kep' off the town fast enough. They both shed
tears when they talked to me about havin' to break up, when I went to
see 'em before I went over to brother Asa's. You see we was brought up
neighbors, an' we went to school