nd, from what
I hear, you've borne them bravely. But you haven't had to face anything
like this."

"Haven't I? Well, what is it you're asked to face? Disappointment? I've
faced that. Sorrow and heartbreak? I've faced them."

"You've never been asked to sit quietly by and see the one you love more
than all the world marry some one else."

"How do you know I ain't? How do you know I ain't doin' just that now?"

"Mrs. Coffin!"

"John Ellery, you listen to me. You think I'm a homely old woman,
probably, set in my ways as an eight-day clock. I guess I look like it
and act like it. But I ain't so awful old--on the edge of forty, that's
all. And when I was your age I wa'n't so awful homely, either. I had
fellers aplenty hangin' round and I could have married any one of a
dozen. This ain't boastin'; land knows I'm fur from that. I was brought
up in this town and even when I was a girl at school there was only one
boy I cared two straws about. He and I went to picnics together and
to parties and everywhere. Folks used to laugh and say we was keepin'
comp'ny, even then.

"Well, when I was eighteen, after father died, I went up to New Bedford
to work in a store there. Wanted to earn my own way. And this young
feller I'm tellin' you about went away to sea, but every time he come
home from a voyage he come to see me and things went on that way till we
was promised to each other. The engagement wa'n't announced, but 'twas
so, just the same. We'd have been married in another year. And then we
quarreled.

"'Twas a fool quarrel, same as that kind gen'rally are. As much my fault
as his and as much his as mine, I cal'late. Anyhow, we was both proud,
or thought we was, and neither would give in. And he says to me, 'You'll
be sorry after I'm gone. You'll wish me back then.' And says I, BEIN' a
fool, 'I guess not. There's other fish in the sea.' He sailed and I did
wish him back, but I wouldn't write fust and neither would he. And then
come another man."

She paused, hesitated, and then continued.

"Never mind about the other man. He was handsome then, in a way, and he
had money to spend, and he liked me. He wanted me to marry him. If--if
the other, the one that went away, had written I never would have
thought of such a thing, but he didn't write. And, my pride bein' hurt,
and all, I finally said yes to the second chap. My folks did all they
could to stop it; they told me he was dissipated, they said he had a bad
name, they told