I.

One day, many years ago, the old Judge Pyne house wore an unwonted look

of gayety and youthfulness. The high-fenced green garden was bright

with June flowers. Under the elms in the large shady front yard you

might see some chairs placed near together, as they often used to be

when the family were all at home and life was going on gayly with eager

talk and pleasure-making; when the elder judge, the grandfather, used

to quote that great author, Dr. Johnson, and say to his girls, "Be

brisk, be splendid, and be public."

One of the chairs had a crimson silk shawl thrown carelessly over its

straight back, and a passer-by, who looked in through the latticed gate

between the tall gate-posts with their white urns, might think that

this piece of shining East Indian color was a huge red lily that had

suddenly bloomed against the syringa bush. There were certain windows

thrown wide open that were usually shut, and their curtains were

blowing free in the light wind of a summer afternoon; it looked as if a

large household had returned to the old house to fill the prim best

rooms and find them full of cheer.

It was evident to every one in town that Miss Harriet Pyne, to use the

village phrase, had company. She was the last of her family, and was

by no means old; but being the last, and wonted to live with people

much older than herself, she had formed all the habits of a serious

elderly person. Ladies of her age, something past thirty, often wore

discreet caps in those days, especially if they were married, but being

single, Miss Harriet clung to youth in this respect, making the one

concession of keeping her waving chestnut hair as smooth and stiffly

arranged as possible. She had been the dutiful companion of her father

and mother in their latest years, all her elder brothers and sisters

having married and gone, or died and gone, out of the old house. Now

that she was left alone it seemed quite the best thing frankly to

accept the fact of age, and to turn more resolutely than ever to the

companionship of duty and serious books. She was more serious and

given to routine than her elders themselves, as sometimes happened when

the daughters of New England gentlefolks were brought up wholly in the

society of their elders. At thirty-five she had more reluctance than

her mother to face an unforeseen occasion, certainly more than her

grandmother, who had preserved some cheerful inheritance of gayety and

worldliness from colonial times.

There was something about the look of the crimson silk shawl in the

front yard to make one suspect that the sober customs of the best house

in a quiet New England village were all being set at defiance, and once

when the mistress of the house came to stand in her own doorway, she

wore the pleased but somewhat apprehensive look of a guest. In these

days New England life held the necessity of much dignity and discretion

of behavior; there was the truest hospitality and good cheer in all

occasional festivities, but it was sometimes a self-conscious

hospitality, followed by an inexorable return to asceticism both of

diet and of behavior. Miss Harriet Pyne belonged to the very dullest

days of New England, those which perhaps held the most priggishness for

the learned professions, the most limited interpretation of the word

"evangelical," and the pettiest indifference to large things. The

outbreak of a desire for larger religious freedom caused at first a

most determined reaction toward formalism, especially in small and

quiet villages like Ashford, intently busy with their own concerns. It

was high time for a little leaven to begin its work, in this moment

when the great impulses of the war for liberty had died away and those

of the coming war for patriotism and a new freedom had hardly yet begun.

The dull interior, the changed life of the old house, whose former

activities seemed to have fallen sound asleep, really typified these

larger conditions, and a little leaven had made its easily recognized

appearance in the shape of a light-hearted girl. She was Miss

Harriet's young Boston cousin, Helena Vernon, who, half-amused and

half-impatient at the unnecessary sober-mindedness of her hostess and

of Ashford in general, had set herself to the difficult task of gayety.

Cousin Harriet looked on at a succession of ingenious and, on the

whole, innocent attempts at pleasure, as she might have looked on at

the frolics of a kitten who easily substitutes a ball of yarn for the

uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment

ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference to either.

Helena, with her mischievous appealing eyes, with her enchanting old

songs and her guitar, seemed the more delightful and even reasonable

because she was so kind to everybody, and because she was a beauty.

She had the gift of most charming manners. There was all the

unconscious lovely ease and grace that had come with the good breeding

of her city home, where many pleasant people came and went; she had no

fear, one had almost said no respect, of the individual, and she did

not need to think of herself. Cousin Harriet turned cold with

apprehension when she saw the minister coming in at the front gate, and

wondered in agony if Martha were properly attired to go to the door,

and would by any chance hear the knocker; it was Helena who, delighted

to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr.

Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could

behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and

even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the

confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of

practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping

that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the

poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his

proper heart, it was Helena who caught the honored hat of the late

Judge Pyne from its last resting-place in the hall, and holding it

securely in both hands, mimicked the minister's self-conscious

entrance. She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim

parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not

always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin of humor, laughed

aloud.

"My dear!" she exclaimed severely the next moment, "I am ashamed of

your being so disrespectful!" and then laughed again, and took the

affecting old hat and carried it back to its place.

"I would not have had any one else see you for the world," she said

sorrowfully as she returned, feeling quite self-possessed again, to the

parlor doorway; but Helena still sat in the minister's chair, with her

small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, and a copy of his solemn

expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar.

"I wish I had asked him if he would be so kind as to climb the

cherry-tree," said Helena, unbending a little at the discovery that her

cousin would consent to laugh no more. "There are all those ripe

cherries on the top branches. I can climb as high as he, but I can't

reach far enough from the last branch that will bear me. The minister

is so long and thin"--

"I don't know what Mr. Crofton would have thought of you; he is a very

serious young man," said cousin Harriet, still ashamed of her laughter.

"Martha will get the cherries for you, or one of the men. I should not

like to have Mr. Crofton think you were frivolous, a young lady of your

opportunities"--but Helena had escaped through the hall and out at the

garden door at the mention of Martha's name. Miss Harriet Pyne sighed

anxiously, and then smiled, in spite of her deep convictions, as she

shut the blinds and tried to make the house look solemn again.

The front door might be shut, but the garden door at the other end of

the broad hall was wide open upon the large sunshiny garden, where the

last of the red and white peonies and the golden lilies, and the first

of the tall blue larkspurs lent their colors in generous fashion. The

straight box borders were all in fresh and shining green of their new

leaves, and there was a fragrance of the old garden's inmost life and

soul blowing from the honeysuckle blossoms on a long trellis. It was

now late in the afternoon, and the sun was low behind great apple-trees

at the garden's end, which threw their shadows over the short turf of

the bleaching-green. The cherry-trees stood at one side in full

sunshine, and Miss Harriet, who presently came to the garden steps to

watch like a hen at the water's edge, saw her cousin's pretty figure in

its white dress of India muslin hurrying across the grass. She was

accompanied by the tall, ungainly shape of Martha the new maid, who,

dull and indifferent to every one else, showed a surprising willingness

and allegiance to the young guest.

"Martha ought to be in the dining-room, already, slow as she is; it

wants but half an hour of tea-time," said Miss Harriet, as she turned

and went into the shaded house. It was Martha's duty to wait at table,

and there had been many trying scenes and defeated efforts toward her

education. Martha was certainly very clumsy, and she seemed the

clumsier because she had replaced her aunt, a most skillful person, who

had but lately married a thriving farm and its prosperous owner. It

must be confessed that Miss Harriet was a most bewildering instructor,

and that her pupil's brain was easily confused and prone to blunders.

The coming of Helena had been somewhat dreaded by reason of this

incompetent service, but the guest took no notice of frowns or futile

gestures at the first tea-table, except to establish friendly relations

with Martha on her own account by a reassuring smile. They were about

the same age, and next morning, before cousin Harriet came down, Helena

showed by a word and a quick touch the right way to do something that

had gone wrong and been impossible to understand the night before. A

moment later the anxious mistress came in without suspicion, but

Martha's eyes were as affectionate as a dog's, and there was a new look

of hopefulness on her face; this dreaded guest was a friend after all,

and not a foe come from proud Boston to confound her ignorance and

patient efforts.

The two young creatures, mistress and maid, were hurrying across the

bleaching-green.

"I can't reach the ripest cherries," explained Helena politely, "and I

think that Miss Pyne ought to send some to the minister. He has just

made us a call. Why Martha, you have n't been crying again!"

"Yes 'm," said Martha sadly. "Miss Pyne always loves to send something

to the minister," she acknowledged with interest, as if she did not

wish to be asked to explain these latest tears.

"We 'll arrange some of the best cherries in a pretty dish. I 'll show

you how, and you shall carry them over to the parsonage after tea,"

said Helena cheerfully, and Martha accepted the embassy with pleasure.

Life was beginning to hold moments of something like delight in the

last few days.

"You 'll spoil your pretty dress, Miss Helena," Martha gave shy

warning, and Miss Helena stood back and held up her skirts with unusual

care while the country girl, in her heavy blue checked gingham, began

to climb the cherry-tree like a boy.

Down came the scarlet fruit like bright rain into the green grass.

"Break some nice twigs with the cherries and leaves together; oh, you

're a duck, Martha!" and Martha, flushed with delight, and looking far

more like a thin and solemn blue heron, came rustling down to earth

again, and gathered the spoils into her clean apron.

That night at tea, during her hand-maiden's temporary absence, Miss

Harriet announced, as if by way of apology, that she thought Martha was

beginning to understand something about her work. "Her aunt was a

treasure, she never had to be told anything twice; but Martha has been

as clumsy as a calf," said the precise mistress of the house. "I have

been afraid sometimes that I never could teach her anything. I was

quite ashamed to have you come just now, and find me so unprepared to

entertain a visitor."

"Oh, Martha will learn fast enough because she cares so much," said the

visitor eagerly. "I think she is a dear good girl. I do hope that she

will never go away. I think she does things better every day, cousin

Harriet," added Helena pleadingly, with all her kind young heart. The

china-closet door was open a little way, and Martha heard every word.

From that moment, she not only knew what love was like, but she knew

love's dear ambitions. To have come from a stony hill-farm and a bare

small wooden house, was like a cave-dweller's coming to make a

permanent home in an art museum, such had seemed the elaborateness and

elegance of Miss Pyne's fashion of life; and Martha's simple brain was

slow enough in its processes and recognitions. But with this

sympathetic ally and defender, this exquisite Miss Helena who believed

in her, all difficulties appeared to vanish.

Later that evening, no longer homesick or hopeless, Martha returned

from her polite errand to the minister, and stood with a sort of

triumph before the two ladies, who were sitting in the front doorway,

as if they were waiting for visitors, Helena still in her white muslin

and red ribbons, and Miss Harriet in a thin black silk. Being happily

self-forgetful in the greatness of the moment, Martha's manners were

perfect, and she looked for once almost pretty and quite as young as

she was.

"The minister came to the door himself, and returned his thanks. He

said that cherries were always his favorite fruit, and he was much

obliged to both Miss Pyne and Miss Vernon. He kept me waiting a few

minutes, while he got this book ready to send to you, Miss Helena."

"What are you saying, Martha? I have sent him nothing!" exclaimed Miss

Pyne, much astonished. "What does she mean, Helena?"

"Only a few cherries," explained Helena. "I thought Mr. Crofton would

like them after his afternoon of parish calls. Martha and I arranged

them before tea, and I sent them with our compliments."

"Oh, I am very glad you did," said Miss Harriet, wondering, but much

relieved. "I was afraid"--

"No, it was none of my mischief," answered Helena daringly. "I did not

think that Martha would be ready to go so soon. I should have shown

you how pretty they looked among their green leaves. We put them in

one of your best white dishes with the openwork edge. Martha shall

show you to-morrow; mamma always likes to have them so." Helena's

fingers were busy with the hard knot of a parcel.

"See this, cousin Harriet!" she announced proudly, as Martha

disappeared round the corner of the house, beaming with the pleasures

of adventure and success. "Look! the minister has sent me a book:

Sermons on _what_? Sermons--it is so dark that I can't quite see."

"It must be his 'Sermons on the Seriousness of Life;' they are the only

ones he has printed, I believe," said Miss Harriet, with much pleasure.

"They are considered very fine discourses. He pays you a great

compliment, my dear. I feared that he noticed your girlish levity."

"I behaved beautifully while he stayed," insisted Helena. "Ministers

are only men," but she blushed with pleasure. It was certainly

something to receive a book from its author, and such a tribute made

her of more value to the whole reverent household. The minister was

not only a man, but a bachelor, and Helena was at the age that best

loves conquest; it was at any rate comfortable to be reinstated in

cousin Harriet's good graces.

"Do ask the kind gentleman to tea! He needs a little cheering up,"

begged the siren in India muslin, as she laid the shiny black volume of

sermons on the stone doorstep with an air of approval, but as if they

had quite finished their mission.

"Perhaps I shall, if Martha improves as much as she has within the last

day or two," Miss Harriet promised hopefully. "It is something I

always dread a little when I am all alone, but I think Mr. Crofton

likes to come. He converses so elegantly."