I'll be gettin' supper now that the baby's
sleepin' sound, and ye'll sit by and eat."

"If you let me help you, Sister Hiler," said the young man with a
cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming heart affection, and awakened
in the widow a feminine curiosity as to his real feelings to Meely.
But her further questioning was met with a frank, amiable, and simple
brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful periphrase of tact.
Accustomed as she was to the loquacity of grief and the confiding
prolixity of disappointed lovers, she could not understand her guest's
quiescent attitude. Her curiosity, however, soon gave way to the
habitual contemplation of her own sorrows, and she could not forego the
opportune presence of a sympathizing auditor to whom she could relieve
her feelings. The preparations for the evening meal were therefore
accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost
youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life,
her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the
disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She
rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music
of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its
stridulous reiteration. The young man listened, and replied with
softly assenting eyes, but without pausing in the material aid that he
was quietly giving her. He had removed the cradle of the sleeping
child to the bedroom, quieted the sudden wakefulness of "Pinkey,"
rearranged the straggling furniture of the sitting-room with much order
and tidiness, repaired the hinges of a rebellious shutter and the lock
of an unyielding door, and yet had apparently retained an unabated
interest in her spoken woes. Surprised once more into recognizing this
devotion, Sister Hiler abruptly arrested her monologue.

"Well, if you ain't the handiest man I ever seed about a house!"

"Am I?" said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes. "Do you really
think so?"

"I do."

"Then you don't know how glad I am." His frank face so unmistakably
showed his simple gratification that the widow, after gazing at him for
a moment, was suddenly seized with a bewildering fancy. The first
effect of it was the abrupt withdrawal of her eyes, then a sudden
effusion of blood to her forehead that finally extended to her
cheekbones, and then an interval of forgetfulness where she remained
with a plate held vague