usually pale,
blossomed to roses when you spoke to her, her hair drooping over them
dark and silky; and though she was slack and untidy and at loose ends
about her dress, she somehow always seemed like a princess in disguise;
and when she had on any thing new,--a sprigged calico, and her little
straw bonnet with the pink ribbons, and Mrs. Devereux's black scarf, for
instance,--you'd have allowed that she might have been daughter to the
Queen of Sheba. I don't know, but I rather think Dan wouldn't have said
any more to Faith, from various motives, you see, notwithstanding the
neighbors were still remonstrating with him, if it hadn't been that Miss
Brown--she that lived round the corner there; the town's well quit
of her now, poor thing!--went to saying the same stuff to Faith,
and telling her all that other folks said. And Faith went home in a
passion,--some of your timid kind nothing ever abashes, and nobody gets
to the windward of them,--and, being perfectly furious, fell to accusing
Dan of having brought her to this, so that Dan actually believed he had,
and was cut to the quick with contrition, and told her that all the
reparation he could make he was waiting and wishing to make, and then
there came floods of tears. Some women seem to have set out with the
idea that life's a desert for them to cross, and they've laid in a
supply of water-bags accordingly,--but it's the meanest weapon! And then
again, there's men that are iron, and not to be bent under calamities,
that these tears can twist round your little finger. Well, I suppose
Faith concluded 'twas no use to go hungry because her bread wasn't
buttered on both sides, but she always acted as if she'd condescended
ninety degrees in marrying Dan, and Dan always seemed to feel that he'd
done her a great injury; and there it was.

I kept in the house for a time; mother was worse.--and I thought the
less Dan saw of me the better; I kind of hoped he'd forget, and find his
happiness where it ought to be. But the first time I saw him, when Faith
had been his wife all the spring, there was the look in his eyes that
told of the ache in his heart. Faith wasn't very happy herself, of
course, though she was careless; and she gave him trouble,--keeping
company with the young men just as before; and she got into a way of
flying straight to me, if Dan ventured to reprove her ever so lightly;
and stormy nights, when he was gone, and in his long trips, she always
locked up her doors