Elizabeth's lip quivered.

"It's the pleasantest place, Mrs. Nettley -- I am quite in the
shade -- I can't be better than I am there, thank you."

"Don't she look dreadful!" said the good lady, as Elizabeth
went from the house. "Oh, I never have seen anybody so
changed!"

"She's pulled down a bit since she come," said Karen, who gave
Elizabeth but a moderate share of her good will at any time.
"She's got her mind up high enough, anyway, for all she's gone
through."

"Who hain't?" said Clam. "Hain't the Governor _his_ mind up high
enough? And you can't pull him down, but you can her."

"His don't never need," said Karen.

"Well -- I don' know, --" said Clam, picking up several things
about the floor -- "but them high minds is a trial."

"Hain't you got one yourself, girl?" said old Karen.

"Hope so, ma'am. I take after my admirers. That's all the way
I live, -- keeping my head up -- always did."

Karen deigned no reply, but went off.

"Mis' Nettles," said Clam, "do _you_ think Miss Haye 'll ever
stand it up here all alone in this here place?"

"Why not?" said Mrs. Nettley innocently.

"I guess your head ain't high enough up for to see her'n,"
said Clam, in scornful impatience. And she too quitted the
conversation in disgust.

CHAPTER XII.

'Resolve,' the haughty moralist would say,
'The single act is all that we demand.'
Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly
Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn
His natural wings.
WORDSWORTH.

The book in Elizabeth's hand was her bible. It was the next
thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop's going
away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter
of Matthew. It was action, and she craved action. It was an
undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of
Winthrop's words -- "Ask honestly, of your own conscience and
of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of
what you read." And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had
set her upon. So she sought out her yesterday's couch of moss
with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood
from yesterday's mood, and put her bible on her lap. It was a
feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to
sleep.

The day itself was very like yesterday. Elizabeth listened a
minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but
presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she
opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew. She was very