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“There’s a sight o’ work left yet in the old ma’am,” she said to Tobias, in an unwontedly affectionate tone. “I guess we shall keep house together as comfortable as most folks.” But Tobias grew very red in the face and bent over his plate.

“I don’ know’s I want the girls to get ahead of me,” he said sheepishly. “I ain’t meanin’ to put you out with another wedding right away, but I’ve been a-lookin’ round, an’ I guess I’ve found somebody to suit me.”

Mercy Bascom turned cold with misery and disappointment. “Why T’bias,” she said, anxiously, “folks always said that you was cut out for an old bachelor till I come to believe it, an’ I’ve been lottin’ on”–

“Course nobody’s goin’ to wrench me an’ you apart,” said Tobias gallantly. “I made up my mind long ago you an’ me was yoke-mates, mother. An’ I had it in my mind to fetch you somebody that would ease you o’ quite so much work now ‘Liza’s gone off.”

“I don’t want nobody,” said the grieved woman, and she could eat no more supper; that festive supper for which she had cooked her very best. Tobias was sorry for her, but he had his rights, and now simply felt light-hearted because he had freed his mind of this unwelcome declaration. Tobias was slow and stolid to behold, but he was a man of sound ideas and great talent for farming. He had found it difficult to choose between his favorites among the marriageable girls, a bright young creature who was really too good for him, but penniless, and a weaker damsel who was heiress to the best farm in town. The farm won the day at last; and Mrs. Bascom felt a thrill of pride at her son’s worldly success; then she asked to know her son’s plans, and was wholly disappointed. Tobias meant to sell the old place; he had no idea of leaving her alone as she wistfully complained; he meant to have her make a new home at the Bassett place with him and his bride.

That she would never do: the old place which had given them a living never should be left or sold to strangers. Tobias was not prepared for her fierce outburst of reproach at the mere suggestion. She would live alone and pay her way as she always had done, and so it was, for a few years of difficulties. Tobias was never ready to plough or plant when she needed him; his own great farm was more than he could serve properly. It grew more and more difficult to hire workmen, and they were seldom worth their wages. At last Tobias’s wife, who was a kindly soul, persuaded her reluctant mother-in-law to come and spend a winter; the old woman was tired and for once disheartened; she found herself deeply in love with her grandchildren, and so next spring she let the little hill farm on the halves to an impecunious but hard-working young couple.

To everybody’s surprise the two women lived together harmoniously. Tobias’s wife did everything to please her mother-in-law except to be other than a Bassett. And Mercy, for the most part, ignored this misfortune, and rarely was provoked into calling it a fault. Now that the necessity for hard work and anxiety was past, she appeared to have come to an Indian summer shining-out of her natural amiability and tolerance. She was sometimes indirectly reproachful of her daughter’s easy-going ways, and set an indignant example now and then by a famous onslaught of unnecessary work, and always dressed and behaved herself in plainest farm fashion, while Mrs. Tobias was given to undue worldliness and style. But they worked well together in the main, for, to use Mercy’s own words, she “had seen enough of life not to want to go into other folks’ houses and make trouble.”