She stood by the window, looking out over the dreary landscape, a woman of some twenty-five years, with an earnest, even melancholy face, in which the wistful brown eyes were undoubtedly the redeeming feature. Jones' Hill, taken at its best, in full parade uniform of summer green, was not renowned for beauty or picturesqueness, and now, in fatigue dress of sodden brown stubble, with occasional patches of dingy white in ditches and hollows and along the edges of the dark pine woods, was even less calculated to inspire the beholder with enthusiasm. Still, that would hardly account for the shadow which rested upon Thirza Bradford's face. She ought, in fact, to have worn a cheerful countenance. One week before she had been a poor girl, dependent upon the labor of her hand for her daily bread; to-day she was sole possessor of a farm of considerable extent, the comfortable old house at one of whose windows she was now standing, and all that house's contents.  
One week before she had been called to the bed-side of her aunt, Abigail Leavitt. She had arrived none too soon, for the stern, sad old woman had[92] received her summons, and before another morning dawned had passed away.
 
To her great surprise, Thirza found that her aunt had left her sole heiress of all she had possessed. Why she should have been surprised would be difficult to explain. Aunt Abigail's two boys had gone to the war and never returned, her husband had been dead for many years, and Thirza was her only sister's only child, and sole surviving relative. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than this event, but Thirza had simply never thought of it. She had listened, half in wonder, half in indifference, to the reading of the will, and had accepted mechanically the grudgingly tendered congratulations of the assembled farmers and their wives.
 
She had been supported in arranging and carrying out the gloomy details of the funeral by Jane Withers, a spinster of a type peculiar to New England; one of those persons who, scorning to demean themselves by "hiring out," go about, nevertheless, from family to family, rendering reluctant service, "just to accommodate" (accepting a weekly stipend in the same spirit of accommodation, it is to be supposed). With this person's assistance, Thirza had prepared the repast to which, according to custom, the mourners from a distance were invited on their return from the burying-ground. Aunt Abigail had been stricken down at the close of a Saturday's baking, leaving a goodly array upon the pan[93]try shelves, a fact upon which Jane congratulated herself without any attempt at concealment, observing, in fact, that the melancholy event "couldn't have happened handier." In vain had Thirza protested—Jane was inflexible—and she had looked on with silent horror, while the funeral guests devoured with great relish the pies and ginger-bread which the dead woman's hand had prepared.
 
"Mis' Leavitt were a master hand at pie-crust," remarked one toothless dame, mumbling at the flaky paste, "a master hand at pie-crust, but she never were much at bread!" whereupon the whole feminine conclave launched out into a prolonged and noisy discussion of the relative merits of salt-risin's, milk-emptin's, and potato yeast.
 
That was three or four days ago, and Thirza had remained in the old house with Jane, who had kindly proffered her services and the solace of her companionship. There had been little to do in the house, and that little was soon done, and now the question of what she was to do with her new acquisition was looming up before her, and assuming truly colossal proportions. She was thinking of it now as she stood there with the wistful look upon her face, almost wishing that Aunt Abigail had left the farm to old Jabez Higgins, a fourth or fifth cousin by marriage, who had dutifully appeared at the funeral, with a look as if he had that within which passed showing, and doubtless he had, for[94] he turned green and blue when the will was read, and drove off soon after at a tearing pace.
 
Jane, having condescended to perform the operation of washing up the two plates, cups, etc., which their evening meal had brought into requisition, entered presently, knitting in hand, and seated herself with much emphasis in a low wooden chair near the window. She was an erect and angular person, with an aggressive air of independence about her, a kind of "just-as-good-as-you-are" expression, which seemed to challenge the observer to dispute it at his peril. She took up the first stitch on her needle, fixed her sharp eyes upon Thirza, and, as if in answer to her thoughts, opened on her as follows:
 
"Ye haint made up yer mind what ye're a-goin' ter dew, hev ye?"
 
Thirza slowly shook her head, without looking around.
 
"It's kind o' queer now how things does work a-round. There you was a-workin' an' a-slavin' in that old mill, day in an' day out, only a week ago, an' now you can jest settle right down on yer own place an' take things easy."
 
Thirza vaguely wondered why Aunt Abigail had never "taken things easy."
 
"I shouldn't wonder a mite," went on Jane, with increasing animation, "I shouldn't wonder a single mite if you should git a husband, after all!"
 
[95]
 
Thirza's pale face flushed, and she made an involuntary gesture of impatience with one shoulder.
 
"Oh, ye needn't twist around so," said the undaunted spinster, dryly. "Ye ain't no chicken, laws knows, but ye needn't give up all hopes. Ye're twenty-five if ye're a day, but that ain't nothin' when a woman's got a farm worth three thousand dollars."
 
Three thousand dollars! For the first time her inheritance assumed its monetary value before Thirza's eyes. Hitherto she had regarded it merely as an indefinite extent of pastures, woods, and swamps—but three thousand dollars! It sounded like a deal of money to her, who had never owned a hundred dollars at one time in her life, and her imagination immediately wandered off into fascinating vistas, which Jane's prosaic words had thrown open before her. She heard, as in a dream, the nasal, incisive voice as it went on with the catalogue of her possessions.
 
"Yes, it's worth three thousand dollars, if it's worth a cent! I heerd Squire Brooks a-tellin' Orthaniel Stebbins so at the funeral. An' then, here's the house. There ain't no comfortabler one on Joneses' Hill, nor one that has more good furnitoor an' fixin's in it. Then there's Aunt Abigail's clo'es an' things. Why, ter my sartain knowledge there's no less'n five real good dresses a-hangin' in the fore-chamber closet, ter say nothin' of the bureau full of under-clo'es an' beddin'." Jane did not[96] think it necessary to explain by what means this "sartain knowledge" had been achieved, but continued: "There's a silk warp alpacky now, a-hangin' up there, why—it's e'en-a-most as good as new! The creases ain't out on't." (Unsophisticated Jane! not to know that the creases never do go out of alpaca.) "I don't see what in the name o' sense ye're a-goin' ter dew with all them dresses. It'll take ye a life-time ter wear 'em out. If I hed that silk warp alpacky now,"—she continued musingly, yet raising her voice so suddenly that Thirza started; "if I hed that are dress, I should take out two of the back breadths for an over-skirt—yes—an' gore the others!" This climax was delivered in triumphant tone. Then lowering her voice she continued, reflectively: "Aunt Abigail was jest about my build."
 
Thirza caught the import of the last words.
 
"Jane," said she, languidly, with an undertone of impatience in her voice (it was hard to be recalled from her pleasant wanderings by a silk warp alpaca!), "Jane, you can have it."
 
"Wh—what d'ye say?" inquired Jane, incredulously.
 
"I said you could have that dress; I don't want it," repeated Thirza.
 
Jane sat a moment in silence before she trusted herself to speak. Her heart was beating with delight, but she would not allow the smallest evi[97]dence of joy or gratitude to escape in word or look.
 
"Wall," she remarked, coolly, after a fitting pause, "ef you haint got no use for it, I might take it, I s'pose. Not that I'm put tew it for clo'es, but I allers did think a sight of Aunt Abigail——"
 
Her remarks were interrupted by an exclamation from Thirza. The front gate opened with a squeak and closed with a rattle and bang, and the tall form of Orthaniel Stebbins was seen coming up the path. Orthaniel was a mature youth of thirty. For length and leanness of body, prominence of elbow and knee joints, size and knobbiness of extremities, and vacuity of expression, Orthaniel would have been hard to match. He was attired in a well-preserved black cloth suit, with all the usual accessories of a rustic toilet. His garments seemed to have been designed by his tailor for the utmost possible display of the joints above mentioned, and would have suggested the human form with equal clearness, if buttoned around one of the sprawling stumps which were so prominent a feature in the surrounding landscape. On this particular occasion there was an air of importance, almost of solemnity, about his person, which, added to a complacent simper, born of a sense of the delicate nature of his present errand, produced in his usually blank countenance something almost amounting to expression.
 
[98]
 
At first sight of this not unfamiliar apparition, Thirza had incontinently fled, but Jane received the visitor with becoming impressiveness.
 
"Good-evenin', Mr. Stebbins. Walk right into the fore-room," she remarked, throwing open the door of that apartment of state.
 
"No need o' puttin' yourself out, marm; the settin'-room's good enough for me," graciously responded the gentleman.
 
"Walk right in," repeated Jane, throwing open one shutter, and letting in a dim light upon the scene—a veritable chamber of horrors, with its hideous carpet, hair-cloth chairs and sofa, the nameless abominations on its walls, and its general air of protest against the spirit of beauty and all that goes to make up human comfort.
 
Mr. Stebbins paused on the threshold. There was something unusually repellent about the room, a lingering funereal atmosphere, which reached even his dull senses. He would have infinitely preferred the sitting-room; but a latent sense of something in his errand which required the utmost dignity in his surroundings prevailed, and he therefore entered and seated himself on one of the prickly chairs, which creaked expostulatingly beneath him.
 
"I—ahem! Is Miss Bradford in?"
 
This question was, of course, a mere form,—a ruse de guerre, as it were,—and Mr. Stebbins chuckled inwardly over his remarkable diplomacy.[99] He had seen Thirza at the window, and witnessed her sudden flight; but, so far from feeling affronted by the act, it had rather pleased him. It indicated maiden shyness, and he accepted it as a flattering tribute to his powers of fascination. "She's gone to fix up her hair, or somethin'," he reflected.
 
When Jane came to summon her, she found Thirza sitting by the window of the fore-chamber, gazing thoughtfully out into the twilight again.
 
"Thirzy!" whispered the spinster, as mysteriously as if Mr. Stebbins was within possible earshot, "Orthaniel Stebbins wants ter see yer. Go right down!"
 
"Jane, I—sha'n't!" answered Thirza, shortly.
 
Jane started, and opened her small gray eyes their very widest.
 
"Wh-at?" she stammered.
 
"I mean I don't want to go down," said Thirza, more politely. "I don't wish to see him."
 
"Wall, if that don't beat the master!" exclaimed Jane, coming nearer. "Why, he's got on his Sunday clo'es! 'S likely 's not he's a-goin' ter propose ter ye!"
 
"You had better send him away, then," said Thirza.
 
"Ye don't mean to say ye wouldn't hev him!" gasped Jane, with a look of incredulous amazement which, catching Thirza's eye, caused her to burst into a laugh.
 
[100]
 
"I suppose I must go down," she said at last, rising. "If I don't, I shall have all Jones' Hill down upon me. Oh dear!"
 
Mr. Stebbins would have been surprised to see that she passed the mirror without even one glance.
 
"Hadn't ye better take off yer apron, an' put on a pink bow, or somethin'?" suggested Jane; "ye look real plain."
 
Thirza did not deign to reply, but walked indifferently away.
 
"Wall!" ejaculated the bewildered spinster, "I hope I may never!" And then, being a person who believed in improving one's opportunities, she proceeded at once to a careful re-examination of the "silk-warp alpacky," which hung in straight, solemn folds from a nail in the closet; it had hung precisely the same upon Aunt Abigail's lathy form.
 
Thirza went into the gloomy fore-room. It struck a chill to her heart, and she went straight past Mr. Stebbins, with merely a nod and a "good-evening," and threw open another shutter, before seating herself so far from him, and in such a position, that he could only see her face by an extraordinary muscular feat. Mr. Stebbins felt that his reception was not an encouraging one. He hemmed and hawed, and at last managed to utter:
 
[101]
 
"Pleasant evenin', Miss Bradford."
 
"Very," responded Thirza. It was particularly cold and disagreeable outside, even for a New England April.
 
"I guess we kin begin plantin' by next week," continued the gentleman.
 
"Do you really think so?" responded Thirza, in an absent sort of way.
 
It was not much; but it was a question, and in so far helped on the conversation. Mr. Stebbins was re-assured.
 
"Yes," he resumed, in an animated manner, "I actooally dew! Ye see, Miss Bradford, ye haint said nothin' tew me about the farm, so I thought I'd come 'roun' an' find out what yer plans is."
 
"I haven't made any," said Thirza, as he paused.
 
"Oh—ye haint? Well, ye know I've been a-workin' on't on shares fur yer aunt Abigail, goin' on five year, an' I'm ready ter dew the same fur you; that is——" and here Mr. Stebbins hitched a little nearer, while a smile, which displayed not only all his teeth, but no little gum as well, spread itself over his bucolic features, "that is, if we can't make no other arrangements more pleasin'."
 
There was no mistaking his intentions now; they spoke from every feature of his shrewdly smiling countenance, from his agitated knees and[102] elbows, and from the uneasy hands and feet which seemed struggling to detach themselves from their lank continuations and abscond then and there.
 
Thirza looked her wooer calmly in the face. Her imperturbability embarrassed but did not dishearten him.
 
"Thar ain't no use in foolin' round the stump!" he continued. "I might jest as well come out with it, plain an' squar! I'm ready an' willin' to take the hull farm off yer hands if you're agreeable. You jest marry me, Thirzy, an' that settles the hull question slick as a whistle!" and Mr. Stebbins settled back in his chair with a look as if he had just elucidated a long-mooted problem in social science.
 
Thirza rose: there was a little red spot on each cheek, and an unwonted sparkle in her soft eyes; but her manner was otherwise unruffled as she answered:
 
"You are really very kind, Mr. Stebbins, but I think I shall find some other way out of the dilemma. I couldn't think of troubling you."
 
"Oh——" he stammered, "'tain't—no trouble—at all!"
 
But Thirza was gone.
 
For a moment Mr. Stebbins doubted his identity. He stared blankly at the open door awhile, and then his eyes wandered vacantly over the carpet and wall, finally coming to rest upon the toes[103] of his substantial boots. He sat for some time thus, repeating Thirza's words as nearly as he could recall them, endeavoring to extract the pith of meaning from the surrounding fibres of polite language. Had she actually refused him? Mr. Stebbins, by a long and circuitous mental process, arrived at length at the conclusion that she had, and accordingly rose, walked out of the front door and down the narrow path, in a state of mind best known to rejected suitors. As he closed the gate he cast one sheepish look toward the house.
 
"I'll be darned!" he muttered, "I'll be darned if I hain't got the mitten!" and, discomfited and sore, the Adonis of Jones' Hill disappeared in the evening shadows.
 
Jane was watching his departure from behind the curtain of the sitting-room window. In all probability her gentle bosom had never been the scene of such a struggle as was now going on beneath the chaste folds of her striped calico gown. She could not doubt the object of Mr. Stebbins's visit, nor its obvious result. Astonishment, incredulity, curiosity, in turn possessed her.
 
"Waal!" she soliloquized, as the curtain fell from her trembling fingers, "the way some folks fly in the face of Providence doos beat the master!"
 
Thirza, too, had observed her suitor as he strode away, with an expression of scorn upon her face which finally gave way to one of amusement, end[104]ing in a laugh—a curious hysterical laugh. A moment later she had thrown herself upon the bed, and Jane, who in a state of curiosity bordering on asphyxia, came up to the door soon after, heard a sound of sobbing, and considerately went away.
 
Thirza had her cry out; every woman knows what that means, and knows, too, the mingled sense of relief and exhaustion which follows. It was fully an hour later when she arose and groped her way down into the sitting-room where Jane sat knitting zealously by the light of a small lamp. That person's internal struggles commenced afresh, and a feeling of indignation quite comprehensible burnt in her much-vexed bosom as Thirza, after lighting another lamp, bade her "good-night," and went out of the room, leaving her cravings for fuller information unassuaged.
 
Once more in her room, Thirza seated herself before the glass and began to loosen the heavy dark braids of her hair. Upon the bureau lay an open letter, and leaving the soft tresses half undone, she took it up and re-read it. When she had finished she let it fall upon her lap and fell to thinking. The letter was from her cousin Sue, and bore a foreign post-mark, and from thinking over its contents Thirza fell into reflections upon the diversity of human fate, particularly her own and Sue's. They had commenced life under very similar circumstances. Both had been born about[105] the same time, and in the town of Millburn. Both were "only" children, the fathers of both were mechanics of the better class, and the girls were closely associated up to their fourteenth year, as play-fellows and school-mates. Sue was an ordinary sort of a girl, with a rather pretty blonde face; Thirza, a bright, original creature, with a mobile, dark face, which almost every one turned to take a second look at; a girl who, with a book, almost any book, became oblivious of all else. Her father was a man of more than ordinary intelligence, of a dreamy, speculative turn of mind, and subject to periods of intense depression. When she was about fourteen years old, Thirza went one evening to the barn to call her father to supper. Receiving no answer to her call, she entered, and there, in a dim corner, she saw something suspended from a beam,—something she could never efface from her memory. A shaft of sunlight full of dancing motes fell athwart the distorted face, whose smile she must now forever miss, and across the rigid hands which would never again stroke her hair in the old fond, proud way. In that moment the child became a woman. She went to the nearest neighbor, and without scream or sob told what she had seen—then she went to her mother. Soon after, the young girl whose school-life was thus early ended took her place at a loom in one of the great cotton-mills, and there she re[106]mained for more than ten years, the sole support and comfort of her weak, complaining mother, who from the dreadful day that made her a widow, sank into hopeless invalidism. One year previously to the commencement of this story she had been laid to rest. In the meantime Sue had grown up, and married a "smart fellow," who after a few years of successful business life in New York, had been sent by some great firm to take charge of a branch establishment in Paris.
 
Thirza was thinking of these things now, as she sat with Sue's gossipy letter on her lap—thinking of them wearily, and even with some bitterness. It seemed to her hard and strange that Sue should have everything, and she only her lonely, toilsome life, and her dreams. These indeed remained; no one could forbid them to her—no amount of toil and constant contact with sordid natures could despoil her of her one priceless treasure, the power to live, in imagination, brief but exquisite phases of existence which no one around her ever suspected. Books furnished the innocent hasheesh, which transported her out of the stale atmosphere of her boarding-house into realms of ever new delight.
 
But to-night she could not dream. The interview with Mr. Stebbins had been a rude shock, a bitter humiliation to her. She had held herself so proudly aloof from the men of her acquaintance[107] that none had ever before ventured to cross the fine line of reserve she had drawn about her; and now, this uncouth, mercenary clown had dared pull down the barrier, and trample under foot the delicate flowers of sentiment she had cherished with such secrecy and care. Her first wooer! Not thus, in the idle dreams which come to every maiden's heart, had Thirza pictured him. That other rose before her now, and strangely enough, it took on the semblance, as it often had of late, of one she had almost daily seen—a handsome face, a true and good one, too; and yet the hot blood surged into her cheeks, and she tried to banish the image from her mind. It would not go at her bidding, however, and, as if to hide from her own eyes in the darkness, Thirza arose and put out the light.
 
There was no time for dreaming after this, for the question of her inheritance must be settled. So, after a day or two of reflection, Thirza drove into town and held a long consultation with Squire Brooks, the result of which was that the farm was announced for sale. It was not long before a purchaser appeared, and in due course of time Thirza found herself, for the first time in her life, in possession of a bank-book!
 
She returned to her place in the mill, notwithstanding, and was secretly edified in observing the effect which her re-appearance produced upon the[108] operatives. The women watched her askance, curiously and enviously, indulging in furtive remarks upon her unchanged appearance. As an heiress something had evidently been expected of her in the way of increased elegance in dress, and its non-appearance excited comment. On the part of the men there was a slight increase of respect in their mode of salutation, and in one or two instances, an endeavor to cultivate a nearer acquaintance, an endeavor, it is needless to say, without success.
 
But if there was no outer change in Thirza, there was an inner change going on, which became at length a feverish restlessness, which disturbed her night and day. She found herself continually taking down from her shelves certain fascinating books, treating of foreign scenes and people; reading and re-reading them, and laying them aside with strange reluctance. Then she fell into a habit of taking her little bank-book, and figuring assiduously upon the covers. Three thousand dollars! Enough, she bitterly reflected, to keep her from the almshouse when her hands became too feeble to ............