ave her! And then he paused, as he had paused so often in the flood of
his anger, faced by the realization that this was just what Mrs. Pember
wanted, just what would satisfy her, what she had been waiting
for,--that he should go away and leave Mellony alone. It was an
exasperating dilemma, his abdication and her triumph, or his uncertainty
and her anxiety.

Mellony and her mother passed Captain Phippeny and Captain Smart, who
still stood talking in the summer evening, the fence continuing to
supply all the support their stalwart frames needed in this their hour
of ease. Captain Smart nudged Captain Phippeny as the two figures turned
the corner of Rosaly's Lane.

"So you found 'em, Mis' Pember," remarked Captain Phippeny. He spoke to
the mother, but he looked, not without sympathy at the daughter.

"Yes, I found 'em."

"You reckoned on fetchin' only one of 'em home, I take it," said Captain
Smart.

"I ain't responsible but for one of 'em," replied Mrs. Pember with some
grimness, but with her eyes averted from Mellony's crimsoning face.

"Come, ma," said Mellony again, and they passed on.

"Mis' Pember is likely enough lookin' woman herself," observed Captain
Smart; "it's kind of cur'ous she should be so set agen marryin,' just
_as_ marryin'."

"'Tis so," assented Captain Phippeny, thoughtfully, looking after the
two women.

Without speaking, Mellony and her mother entered the little house where
they lived, and the young girl sank down in the stiff, high-backed
rocker, with its thin calico-covered cushion tied with red braid, that
stood by the window. Outside, the summer night buzzed and hummed, and
breathed sweet odors. Mrs. Pember moved about the room, slightly
altering its arrangements, now and then looking at her daughter half
furtively, as if waiting for her to speak; but Mellony's head was not
turned from the open window, and she was utterly silent. At last this
immobility had a sympathetic effect upon the mother, and she seated
herself not far from the girl, her hands, with their prominent knuckles
and shrunken flesh, folded in unaccustomed idleness, and waited, while
in the room dusk grew to dark. To Mellony the hour was filled with
suggestions that emphasized and defined her misery. In her not turbulent
or passionate nature, the acme of its capacity for emotional suffering
had been reached. Hitherto this suffering had been of the perplexed,
patient, submissive kind; to-night, the beauty of the softly