CHAPTER XIII


SORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE


It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of
February. Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better
companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her. The mouldy pile
was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the
shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the
walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own,
for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the
day; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals,
looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor
before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid
the unpleasantness. Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was
always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task
thought, and yet enough to exercise it.

On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather. Liddy
looking at it said,--

"Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of
the Bible and key?"

"Don't be so foolish, Liddy. As if such things could be."

"Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same."