. His wife had stopped her sewing and was
looking straight into his eyes.

Angelus

To Hephzibah the world was a place of weary days and unrestful nights,
and life was a thing of dishes that were never quite washed and of
bread that was never quite baked--leaving something always to be done.

The sun rose and the sun set, and Hephzibah came to envy the sun. To
her mind, his work extended from the first level ray shot into her room
in the morning to the last rose-flush at night; while as for herself,
there were the supper dishes and the mending-basket yet waiting. To be
sure, she knew, if she stopped to think, that her sunset must be a
sunrise somewhere else; but Hephzibah never stopped to think; she would
have said, had you asked her, that she had no time.

First there was the breakfast for Theron and the hired man in the chill
gray dawn of each day;--if one were to wrest a living from the stones
and sand of the hillside farm, one must be up and at work betimes.
Then Harry, Tom, and Nellie must be roused, dressed, fed, and made
ready for the half-mile walk to the red schoolhouse at the cross-roads.
After that the day was one blur of steam, dust, heat, and stifling
fumes from the oven and the fat-kettle, broken always at regular
intervals by meal-getting and chicken-feeding.

What mattered the blue of the heavens or the green of the earth
outside? To Hephzibah the one was "sky" and the other "grass." What
mattered the sheen of silver on the emerald velvet of the valley far
below? Hephzibah would have told you that it was only the sun on Otter
Creek down in Johnson's meadows.

As for the nights, even sleep brought little relief to Hephzibah; for
her dreams were of hungry mouths that could not be filled, and of
dirt-streaked floors that would not come clean.

Last summer a visitor had spent a week at the farm--Helen Raymond,
Hephzibah's niece from New York; and now a letter had come from this
same Helen Raymond, telling Hephzibah to look out for a package by
express.

A package by express!

Hephzibah laid the letter down, left the dishes cooling in the pan, and
went out into the open yard where she could look far down the road
toward the village.

When had she received a package before? Even Christmas brought no
fascinating boxes or mysterious bundles to her! It would be
interesting to open it; and yet--it probably held a book which she
would have no time to read, or a pretty waist which she woul