lways do about young married people. After supper
we all went out on the porch, and Mary whispered to me and Marthy to
come and see her china closet and pantry. You know how proud a young
housekeeper is of such things. She showed us all through the back part
o' the house, and we praised everything and told her it looked like
old experienced housekeepin' instead of a bride's.

"Well, when we went back to the dinin'-room on our way to the porch,
if there wasn't Harvey bendin' over the table countin' the silver
teaspoons! A man always looks out o' place doin' such things, and I
saw Mary's face turn red to the roots of her hair. But nobody said
anything, and we passed on through and left Harvey still countin'. It
was a little thing, but I couldn't help thinkin' how queer it was for
a man that hadn't been married two weeks to leave his company and go
back to the table to count spoons, and I asked myself how I'd 'a' felt
if I'd found Abram countin' spoons durin' the honeymoon.

"Did you ever take a walk, child, some cloudy night when everything's
covered up by the darkness, and all at once there'll be a flash o'
lightnin' showin' up everything jest for a second? Well, that's the
way it is with people's lives. Near as Harvey and Mary lived to me,
and friendly as we were, I couldn't tell what was happenin' between
'em. But every now and then, as the months went by, and the years, I'd
see or hear somethin' that was like a flash of light in a dark place.
Sometimes it was jest a look, but there's mighty little a look can't
tell; and as for actions, you know they speak louder than words. I
ricollect one Sunday Harvey and Mary was walkin' ahead o' me and
Abram. There was a rough piece o' road jest in front of the church,
and I heard Harvey say: 'Don't walk there, come over on the side where
it's smooth.'

"I reckon Mary thought that Harvey was thinkin' of her feet, for she
stepped over to the side of the road right at once and says he, 'Don't
you know them stones'll wear out your shoes quicker'n anything?' And,
bless your life, if Mary didn't go right back to the middle of the
road, and she took particular pains to walk on the stones as far as
they went. It was a little thing, to be sure, but it showed that
Harvey was thinkin' more of his wife's shoes than he was of her feet,
and that ain't a little thing to a woman.

"Then, again, there was the time when me and Abram was passin'
Harvey's place one evenin', and a storm was comin