hamber, where he
paces back and forth with the babe in his arms, soothing its outcry, as
he thinks out his discourse for the following Sabbath.

In due time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes
through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it
has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform
placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course.
From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other
ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing,
and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a
corps of the Congregational brotherhood. As for the parson, he was like
a child in all household matters. Over and over he would invite his
brethren flocking in from the neighboring villages to pass the night
with him, when Rachel would decoy him into a corner, and declare, with a
most pitiable look of distress, that not a bed was unoccupied in the
house. Whereupon the goodman would quietly take his hat, and trudge
away to Squire Elderkin's, or, on rarer occasions, to Deacon
Tourtelot's, and ask the favor of lodging with them one of his clerical
brethren.

At other times, before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the
little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of
mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his
walk in the orchard,--an order which the poor man never ventured to
resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of
Cowper,--the only poet he habitually read,--he would sally out with hat
and cane,--this latter a gift of an admiring parishioner, which it
pleased Rachel he should use, and which she always brought to him at
such times, with a little childish mime of half-entreaty and
half-command that it was not in his heart to resist, and which on rare
occasions (that were subject of self-accusation afterward) provoked him
to an answering kiss. At which Rachel:--

"Now go and leave us, please; there's a good man! And mind," (shaking
her forefinger at him,) "dinner at half past twelve: Larkin will blow
the shell."

The parson, as he paced back and forth under the apple-trees, out of
sight, and feeling the need of more vigorous exercise than his usual
meditative gait afforded, would on occasions brandish his cane and
assume a military air and stride, (he remembered the Major's only too
well,) getting in a glow with