Ah," said Mr. Jeminy, "love is best of all."

And once again he relapsed into silence. In the evening he drove the
cows in. High up on Hemlock, Aaron, among his slow, thin tunes,
thought to himself: "There go the cows. Mr. Jeminy understands me;
he's a traveled man." And he played his flute harder than ever,
because Mr. Jeminy, who had seen, as Aaron thought, all Aaron had
wanted to see, breathed the airs of foreign lands, and sailed the seven
seas, was setting Aaron's cows to right, in Aaron's tumbled barn.

In the kitchen, Margaret, going to light the lamp, smiled at her
thoughts, which were timid and gay. She was happy because Mr. Jeminy,
who had seen so many elegant women, helped her with her apple jellies,
and brought her kindlings for the stove.

When the cows were milked, Mr. Jeminy came out of the barn, and stood
looking up at the sky, yellow and green, with its promise of frost. "A
cold night," he said to himself, "and a bright morning." He could hear
the wind rising in the west. "Winter is not far off," he said, and he
carried the two warm, foaming milkpails into the kitchen.

As he was eating his supper, a wagon came clattering down the road and
stopped at the door. "There's Ellery Deakan back from Milford," said
Margaret at the window. "I wonder what he wants at this time of night.
Looks to be somebody with him. Go and see, Mr. Jeminy. I've the
pudding to attend to."

XII

MRS. WICKET

Mrs. Grumble was dying. She lay without moving, one wasted hand
holding tightly to the fingers of Mrs. Wicket, who sat beside the bed.
There, where Mrs. Grumble had worked and scolded for twenty years, all
was still; while the clock on the dresser, like a solemn footstep,
seemed to deepen the silence with its single, hollow beat.

But if it was quiet in the schoolmaster's house, it was far from being
quiet in the village, where Mrs. Tomkins was going hurriedly from house
to house in search of Mrs. Wicket's runaway daughter. Mrs. Wicket, who
was dozing, did not hear the anxious voices calling everywhere for
Juliet. To Mrs. Grumble, the sound was like the dwindling murmur of a
world with which she was nearly done. She felt that her end was
approaching, and remarked:

"I hope I haven't given you too much trouble, Mrs. Wicket."

Mrs. Wicket tried to assure Mrs. Grumble that she had not been any
trouble to her. But Mrs. Grumble said weakly:

"Maybe when I was out of my head . . ."

"Don't you f