d. It seemed so simple to carry
Jake Preble a pie of her own baking, as natural as for him to cut her
wood and shovel paths for her in the worst winter weather. When it was a
beautiful clearing-off day after a storm, she loved to sweep her paths
herself, and Jake knew it; but he was always near to rescue her when the
drifts piled too high. But then Cap'n Hanscom came, too, and he was a
widower, and once Sophronia's own husband had taken a hand at the snowy
citadel. Angry maidenhood in her kept hurling questions into the
deepening dusk. Mariana was learning that in a world of giving in
marriage, no woman and no man who have not accorded hostages to fortune
can live unchallenged.

When her ireful mood had worn itself away, she got up with the stiffness
of the mind's depression intensifying the body's chill, and made her way
swiftly toward home. She walked fast, because it seemed to her she could
not possibly bear to meet a neighbor. Even through the dusk her
tell-tale basket would be visible, the dishes in it clinking to the tune
that Mariana was no sort of a woman to marry.

When she reached home, she fled up the path to the door, feeling at
every step the friendliness of the way. The late fall flowers nodded
kindly to her through the dark, and underfoot were the stones and
hollows of the pathway familiar to her from a life's acquaintanceship.

"My sakes," breathed Mariana.

A man was sitting on her steps, and because Jake was so vividly present
to her mind, she almost spoke his name. But it was only Cap'n Hanscom,
rising as she neared him, and opening the door gallantly.

"I says to myself, she'll be along in a minute or two," he told her.

The cap'n had a soft voice touched here and there with whimsical tones.
When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice;
but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing
he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed
to her untidy.

"You stay here in the settin'-room," said she. "I'll get the lamp."

She slipped through the kitchen into the pantry and put her basket
softly down, lest he should hear that shameful clink. Even Cap'n Hanscom
could not be allowed, she thought, to know she had been carrying pies to
a man who would not marry her because she was not the kind of woman to
marry. When she came back, bearing the shining lamp, the cap'n looked
at her in a frank approval.

Mariana was a round, pleasan