care lest she fall
below the popular standard, roamed in and out of the house, and
lightened its dull intervals. She, like the others, grew at once very
happy, because, like them, she accepted her place without a qualm, as if
it had been hers from the beginning. They were simple natures, and when
their joy came, they knew how to meet it.

But if Enoch was content to follow the beaten ways of life, there was
one window through which he looked into the upper heaven of all: thereby
he saw what it is to create. He was a born mechanician. A revolving
wheel would set him to dreaming, and still him to that lethargy of mind
which is an involuntary sharing in the things that are. He could lose
himself in the life of rhythmic motion; and when he discovered rusted
springs, or cogs unprepared to fulfill their purpose, he fell upon them
with the ardor of a worshiper, and tried to set them right. Amelia
thought he should have invented something, and he confessed that he had
invented many things, but somehow failed in getting them on the market.
That process he mentioned with the indifference of a man to whom a
practical outcome is vague, and who finds in the ideal a bright reality.
Even Amelia could see that to be a maker was his joy; to reap rewards of
making was another and a lower task.

One cold day in the early spring, he went "up garret" to hunt out an old
saddle, gathering mildew there, and came upon a greater treasure, a
disabled clock. He stepped heavily down, bearing it aloft in both hands.

"See here, 'Melia," asked he, "why don't this go?"

Amelia was scouring tins on the kitchen table. There was a teasing wind
outside, with a flurry of snow, and she had acknowledged that the
irritating weather made her as nervous as a witch. So she had taken to a
job to quiet herself.

"That clock?" she replied. "That was gran'ther Eli's. It give up
strikin', an' then the hands stuck, an' I lost all patience with it. So
I bought this nickel one, an' carted t' other off into the attic. 'T
ain't worth fixin'."

"Worth it!" repeated Enoch. "Well, I guess I'll give it a chance."

He drew a chair to the stove, and there hesitated. "Say, 'Melia," said
he, "should you jest as soon I'd bring in that old shoemaker's bench out
o' the shed? It's low, an' I could reach my tools off'n the floor."

Amelia lacked the discipline of contact with her kind, but she was
nevertheless smooth as silk in her new wifehood.

"Law, yes, bring it along,"