The young couple went so all the way to Granby, striving now and
then, with casual talk, each to blind the other as to perturbation of
spirit. Lawrence lifted her from the saddle when Granby village came
in sight, but he did not kiss her again. Indeed, Elmira kept her head
well down that he might not; but he asked if he might call and see
her, and she said yes, and the next Wednesday evening was mentioned,
that day being Thursday. Then she fluttered up the Granby street to
Imogen and Sarah Lawson's with her mother's wedding silk, and
Lawrence Prescott rode back to Upham. Much he would have liked to
linger and take Elmira back as she had come, or else drive over for
her later with a chaise, but she had refused.

"Imogen and Sarah can have one of their neighbors' horses and wagons
whenever they like," said she, "and they will carry me home if I want
them to."

A strange maidenly shyness of her own bliss and happiness, which she
longed to repeat, was upon her. She had not told Lawrence what her
errand in Granby was. The truth was that she had planned her new gown
because Lawrence had come home, and she was anxious to wear it to
meeting in the hope that he might admire her in it. Should she betray
this artless preening and trimming of her maiden plumage, which,
though, like a bird's, an open secret of nature, must nevertheless be
kept sacred by an impulse of modest concealment and deceit towards
the one for whose sake it all was?

Chapter XX

They who have sensitive palates for all small, sweet, but secondary
savors of life that come in their way, and no imaginative desires for
others, are contented in spirit. When also small worries and affairs,
even those of their neighbors in lieu of their own, serve them as
well as large ones to keep their minds to a healthy temper of
excitement and zest of life, there is no need to pity them for any
lack of full experience.

Imogen and Sarah Lawson, the two elderly single sisters whom Elmira
Edwards sought in Granby that day, were in a way happier than she,
all flushed with her hope of young love, for they held in certain
tenure that which they had. They were sitting stitching on fine linen
shirts in the little kitchen of the cottage house in which they had
been born. There was a broad slant of sunlight athwart the floor, a
great cat purred in a rocking-chair, the clock ticked, a pot of
greens boiled over the fire. They seemed to look out of a little
secure home radian