had been harmonized by the
experiences of life, "arter dark, you jest go up an' bring home them
blue dishes. Mary's got an awful lot o' fun in her, an' if she ain't
laughin' over that, I'm beat. Now, Jonas, you do it! Do you s'pose she
wants them nice blue pieces out there through wind an' weather? She'd
ruther by half see 'em on the parlor cluzzet shelves; an' if you'll
fetch 'em home, I'll scallop some white paper, jest as she liked, an'
we'll set 'em up there."

Jonas wakened a little from his mental swoon. Life seemed warmer, more
tangible, again.

"Law, do go," said the mother soothingly. "She don't want the whole
township tramplin' up there to eye over her chiny. Make her as nervous
as a witch. Here's the ha'-bushel basket, an' some paper to put between
'em. You go, Jonas, an' I'll clear off the shelves."

So Jonas, whether he was tired of guiding the impulses of his own
unquiet mind, or whether he had become a child again, glad to yield to
the maternal, as we all do in our grief, took the basket and went. He
stood by, still like a child, while this comfortable woman put the china
on the shelves, speaking warmly, as she worked, of the pretty curving of
the cups, and her belief that the pitcher was "one you could pour out
of." She stayed on at the house, and Jonas, through his sickness of the
mind, lay back upon her soothing will as a baby lies in its mother's
arms. But the china was never used, even when he had come to his normal
estate, and bought and sold as before. The mother's prescience was too
keen for that.

Here in this ground are the ambiguities of life carried over into that
other state, its pathos and its small misunderstandings. This was a
much-married man whose last spouse had been a triple widow. Even to him
the situation proved mathematically complex, and the sumptuous stone to
her memory bears the dizzying legend that "Enoch Nudd who erects this
stone is her fourth husband and his fifth wife." Perhaps it was the
exigencies of space which brought about this amazing elision; but
surely, in its very apparent intention, there is only a modest pride.
For indubitably the much-married may plume themselves upon being also
the widely sought. If it is the crown of sex to be desired, here you
have it, under seal of the civil bond. No baseless, windy boasting that
"I might an if I would!" Nay, here be the marriage ties to testify.

In this pleasant, weedy corner is a little white stone, not so long
erec