e a bone, and went
into easy cushions of dimpled flesh. If ever Jacky died and went into a
more spiritual world, she would be sure to take with her much of the
warmth and spring and vigor of this. She had drawn her chair close to
Doctor Manning's, where the flickering light touched the soft woollen
folds of her dress and the bit of crimson ribbon at her throat. He liked
bright colors, like most men of his age. It was a pretty picture.

I turned and looked down at the river again, shivering,--trying to think
of the place and all we were leaving. I did not wonder that it cost the
others little to give up the house: it meant but little to them. Doctor
Manning had bought it just before we were married, being then a square
chocolate-colored farm-house, and we had worked our own whims on it to
make it into a home, thrusting out a stout-pillared big porch at one
side, and one or two snug little bay-windows from my sewing-room. There
was a sunny slope of clover down to the river, a dusky old apple and
plum orchard at the left, and Mary's kitchen-garden on the right, with a
purblind old peacock strutting through the paths, showing its green and
gold. Not much in all this: nothing to please Jacky's artist and poet
sense, if she had any. But----I held on to the porch-railings now,
drumming with my fingers, as I thought of it. It was all the childhood
_I_ ever had known. He brought me there the day we were married, and
until August--six months--we had been there alone. I could hear his old
nag Tinder neighing now, in the stable where we used to go every evening
to feed and rub him down: for I went with Daniel, as I called him, then,
everywhere, even to consult his mason or farm-hands. He used to stand
joking with them a minute after the business was over, in an unwonted
fashion for him, and then scramble into the buggy beside me, and drive
off, his fresh, bright eye turned to the landscape as if enjoying it for
the first time.

"God bless you, Hetty!" he used to say, "this is putting new blood into
my veins."

Generally, in those long rides, I used to succeed in coaxing him
imperceptibly back to talk of his life in South America,--not only that
I liked to hear this new phase of wild adventuring life, but my own
blood would glow and freshen to see the fierce dare-devil look come back
into the eye, and the shut teeth of the grave, laconic old Doctor.
People did not know the man I had married,--no; and I would draw in
closer to his