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The Mettle of the Pasture

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lady of her own age, who was her most patient friend and who supported her clinging nature (which still could not resist the attempt to bloom) as an autumn cornstalk supports a frost-nipped morning-glory. If words of love had ever been whispered into Miss Anna's ear, no human being knew it now: but perhaps her heart also had its under chamber sealed with tears. Women not even behind her back jested at her spinsterhood; and when that is true, a miracle takes place indeed. No doubt Miss Anna was a miracle, not belonging to any country, race, or age; being one of those offerings to the world which nature now and then draws from the deeps of womanhood: a pure gift of God. The two old maids drained their rectifying beverage in the shady porch. Whether from Miss Anna's faith in it or from the simple health-giving of her presence, Harriet passed through a process of healing; and as she handed back the empty glass, she smiled gratefully into Miss Anna's sparkling brown eyes. Nature had been merciful to her in this, that she was as easily healed as wounded. She now returned to the subject which had so irritated her, as we rub pleasantly a spot from which a thorn has been extracted. "What do I care?" she said, straightening her hat as if to complete her recovery. "But if there is one thing that can make me angry, Anna, it is the middle-aged, able-bodied unmarried men of this town. They are perfectly, _perfectly_ contemptible." "Oh, come now!" cried Miss Anna, "I am too old to talk about such silly things myself; but what does a woman care whether she is married or not if she has had offers? And you have had plenty of good offers, my dear." "No, I haven't!" said Harriet, who would tell the truth about this rankling misfortune. "Well, then, it was because the men knew you wouldn't have them." "No, it wasn't!" said Harriet, "it was because they knew I would." "Nonsense!" cried Miss Anna, impatiently. "You mustn't try to palm off so much mock modesty on me, Harriet." "Ah, I am too old to fib about it, Anna! I leave _that_ to my many sisters in misfortune." Harriet looked at her friend's work curiously: she was darning Professor Hardage's socks. "Why do you do that, Anna? Socks are dirt cheap. You might as well go out into the country and darn sheep." "Ah, you have never had a brother--my brother! so you cannot understand. I can feel his heels pressing against my stitches when he is walking a mile away. And I know whenever his fingers touch the buttons I have put back. Besides, don't you like to see people make bad things good, and things with holes in them whole again? Why, that is half the work of the world, Harriet! It is not his feet that make these holes," continued Miss Anna, nicely, "it is his shoes, his big, coarse shoes. And his clothes wear out so soon. He has a tailor who misfits him so exactly from year to year that there is never the slightest deviation in the botch. I know beforehand exactly where all the creases will begin. So I darn and mend. The idea of his big, soft, strong feet making holes in anything! but, then, you have never tucked him in bed at night, my dear, so you know nothing about his feet." "Not I!" said Harriet, embarrassed but not shocked. Miss Anna continued fondly in a lowered voice: "You should have heard him the other day when he pulled open a drawer: 'Why, Anna,' he cried, 'where on earth did I get all these new socks? The pair I left in here must have been alive: they've bred like rabbits.'--'Why, you've forgotten,' I said. 'It's your birthday; and I have made you over, so that you are as good as new--_me_!'" "I never have to be reminded of my birthday," remarked Harriet, reflectively. "Anna, do you know that I have lived about one-eighth of the time since Columbus discovered America: doesn't that sound awful!" "Ah, but you don't look it," said Miss Anna, artistically, "and that's the main object." "Oh, I don't feel it," retorted Harriet, "and that's the main object too. I'm as young as I ever was when I'm away from home; but I declare, Anna, there are times when my mother can make me feel I'm about the oldest thing alive." "Oh, come now! you mustn't begin to talk that way, or I'll have to give you more of the antidote. You are threatened with a relapse." "No more," ordered Harriet with a forbidding hand, "and I repeat what I said. Of course you know I never gossip, Anna; but when I talk to you, I do not feel as though I were talking to anybody." "Why, of course not," said Miss Anna, trying to make the most of the compliment, "I am nobody at all, just a mere nonentity, Harriet." "Anna," said Harriet, after a pause of unusual length, "if it had not been for my mother, I should have been married long ago. Thousands of worse-looking women, and of actually worse women, marry every year in this world and marry reasonably well. It was because she tried to marry me off: that was the bottom of the deviltry--the men saw through her." "I am afraid they did," admitted Miss Anna, affably, looking down into a hole. "Of course I know I am not brilliant," conceded Harriet, "but then I am never commonplace." "I should like to catch any one saying such a thing." "Even if I were, commonplace women always make the best wives: do they not?" "Oh, don't ask that question in this porch," exclaimed Miss Anna a little resentfully. "What do I know about it!" "My mother thinks I am a weak woman," continued Harriet, musingly. "If my day ever comes, she will know that I am, strong, Anna, _strong_." "Ah, now, you must forgive your mother," cried Miss Anna, having reached a familiar turn in this familiar dialogue. "Whatever she did, she did for the best. Certainly it was no fault of yours. But you could get married to-morrow if you wished and you know it, Harriet." (Miss Anna offered up the usual little prayer to be forgiven.) The balm of those words worked through Harriet's veins like a poison of joy. So long as a single human being expresses faith in us, what matters an unbelieving world? Harriet regularly visited Miss Anna to hear these maddening syllables. She called for them as for the refilling of a prescription, which she preferred to get fresh every time rather than take home once for all and use as directed. Among a primitive folk who seemed to have more moral troubles than

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