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“He revived up conversin’ with you an’ makin’ such a good hearty tea,” suggested Marilla, disappearing in the pantry. “I ain’t never felt free with father Haydon, but I do respect him,” she added presently. “Well, now, go right over, Maria, if you feel moved to. I don’t know but what you’re wise. P’r’aps William an’ I’ll walk over, after supper’s put away. I guess you’ve got a busy day before you.”

She stood at the open door and watched Maria Durrant go away, a few minutes later, with a plump bundle under one arm.

“I should think you were going to seek your fortune,” she called merrily, as the good woman turned into the road; but Maria wagged her head with a cheerful nod, and did not deign to look back. “I ought to have given her some bread to tuck under the other arm, like the picture of Benjamin Franklin. I dare say they do need bread; I ought to have thought of it,” said Marilla anxiously, as she returned to the pantry.

“But there! Father Haydon’s got as far along in housekeeping as stopping the baker; an’ he was put out because I sent things too soon, before aunt Martin’s provisions were gone. I’ll risk cousin Maria to get along.”

The new housekeeper trod the little footpath at the road edge with a firm step. She was as eager and delighted as if she were bent on a day’s pleasuring. A truly sympathetic, unselfish heart beat in her breast; she fairly longed to make the lonely, obstinate old man comfortable. Presently she found herself going up the long Haydon lane in the shade of the apple-trees. The great walnut-trees at the other side of the house were huge and heavy with leaves; there was a general floweriness and pleasantness over all growing things; but the tall thin spruce that towered before the front door looked black and solitary, and bore a likeness to old Mr. Haydon himself. Such was the force of this comparison that Miss Durrant stopped and looked at it with compassion.

Then her eyes fell upon the poor flower bed overgrown with weeds, through which the bachelor’s-buttons and London-pride were pushing their way into bloom. “I guess I’ll set a vine to grow up that tree; ‘t would get sun enough, an’ look real live and pretty,” she decided, surveying the situation; then she moved on, with perhaps less eagerness in her gait, and boldly entered the side door of the house. She could hear the sound of an axe in the shed, as if some one were chopping up kindlings. When she caught sight of the empty kitchen she dropped her bundle into the nearest chair, and held up her hands in what was no affectation of an appearance of despair.

IV.

One day in May, about a year from the time that Martha Haydon died, Maria Durrant was sitting by the western window of the kitchen, mending Mr. Haydon’s second-best black coat, when she looked down the lane and saw old Polly Norris approaching the house. Polly was an improvident mother of improvident children, not always quite sound in either wits or behavior, but she had always been gently dealt with by the Haydons, and, as it happened, was also an old acquaintance of Maria Durrant’s own. Maria gave a little groan at the sight of her: she did not feel just then like listening to long tales or responding to troublesome demands. She nodded kindly to the foolish old creature, who presently came wheezing and lamenting into the clean sunshiny kitchen, and dropped herself like an armful of old clothes into the nearest chair.

Maria rose and put by her work; she was half glad, after all, to have company; and Polly Norris was not without certain powers of good-fellowship and entertaining speech.

“I expect this may be the last time I can get so fur,” she announced. “‘T is just ’bout a year sence we was all to Mis’ Haydon’s funeral. I didn’t know but that was the last time. Well, I do’ know but it’s so I can accept that piece o’ pie. I’ve come fur, an’ my strength’s but small. How’s William’s folks?”