Mr. Packard
abstained from all gay society and conducted himself with the greatest
propriety. Nevertheless, when his partner and only confidential friend
extolled Jennie's virtues as wife, housekeeper, companion, and church
member, he remarked absently: "She was all that, Jim, but somehow I
never liked her."

For two years after his bereavement Huldah omitted sending her weather
statistics to Mr. Packard, thinking, with some truth, that it might
seem too marked an attention from an attractive Maine spinster to a
"likely" Indiana widower.

* * * * *

Matters were in this state when Mr. Packard alighted at the Edgewood
station one bright day in August. He declined the offer of a drive,
and soon found himself on the well-remembered road to Pleasant River.
He had not trodden that dusty thoroughfare for many a year, and every
tree and shrub and rock had a message for him, though he was a plain,
matter-of-fact maker of pumps. There was no old home to revisit, for
his stepmother had died long ago, and Jennie had conscientiously
removed the family wreath from the glass case and woven some of the
departed lady's hair into the funereal garland. He walked with the
brisk step of a man who knew what he wanted, but there was a kind of
breathless suspense in his manner which showed that he was uncertain
of getting it. He passed the Whippoorwill Mill, the bubbling spring,
the old moss-covered watering-trough, and then cut across the widow
Buzzell's field straight to the Rumford farm. He kept rehearsing the
subject-matter of a certain speech he intended to make. He knew it by
heart, having repeated it once a day for several months, but nobody
realized better than he that he would forget every word of it the
moment he saw Huldah--at least, if the Huldah of to-day were anything
like the Huldah of the olden time.

The house came in sight. It used to be painted white; it was drab now,
and there was a bay-window in the sitting-room. There was a new pump
in the old place, and, happy omen, he discovered it was one of his own
manufacture. He made his way by sheer force of habit past the kitchen
windows to the side door. That was where they had quarreled mostly. He
had a kind of sentiment about that side door. He paused a moment to
hide his traveling-bag under the grapevine that shaded the porch, and
as he raised his hand to grasp the knocker the blood rushed to his
face and his heart leaped into