I will never go out again." And she never did. It was in fact a
renunciation of the world, made apparently without rage, and adhered to
with cheerful obstinacy.

But although for many years Patience rarely left her home, until the
habit of seclusion had become as fixed as that of a nun who had taken the
vows, no one knew so well as she the news and gossip of the neighborhood,
and her power of learning or divining it seemed to increase with her
years. She had a habit of sitting, when her household duties permitted,
at a front window, which commanded a long view of the river road, and
gathering the news by a process peculiar to herself. From this peep-hole
she studied the character and destination of all the passers-by that came
within range of her vision, and made her comments and deductions, partly
to herself, but for the benefit of those who might be listening.

"Why, there goes Thomas Henry," she would say (she always called people
by their first and middle names). "Now, wherever can he be going this
morning in the very midst of getting in his hay? He can't be going to
the Browns' for vegetables, for they set great store by their own raising
this year; and they don't get their provisions up this way either,
because Mary Ellen quarreled with Simmons's people last year. No!" she
would exclaim, rising to a climax of certainty on this point, "I'll be
bound he is not going after anything in the eating line!"

Meantime Thomas Henry's wagon would be disappearing slowly up the sandy
road, giving Patience a chance to get all she could out of it, by
eliminating all the errands Thomas Henry could not possibly be going to
do in order to arrive at the one he must certainly be bound on.

"They do say he's courting Eliza Merritt," she continued, "but Eliza
never was a girl to make any man leave his haying. No, he's never going
to see Eliza, and if it isn't provisions or love it's nothing short of
sickness. Now, whoever is sick down there? It can't be Mary Ellen,
because she takes after her father's family and they are all hearty. It
must be Mary Ellen's little girls, and the measles are going the rounds.
It must be they've all got the measles."

If the listeners suggested that possibly one of the little girls might
have escaped, the suggestion was decisively put aside.

"No; if one of them had been well, Mary Ellen would have sent her for the
doctor."

Presently Thomas Henry's cart was heard rumbling back, and sure enough he