afraid I couldn't undertake two," she said, and laughed again. Then she
spoke more seriously. "That ceremony must have interested you a good
deal, never having seen it before. I saw that it was all new to you, and
so I made bold to take you under my wing, so to speak."

"You were very kind," said the young minister. "It was really a great
experience for me. May--may I ask, is it a part of your functions, in
the church, I mean, to attend these last rites?"

"Mercy, no!" replied the girl, spinning the parasol on her shoulder and
smiling at the thought. "No; it was only because MacEvoy was one of our
workmen, and really came by his death through father sending him up to
trim a tree. Ann MacEvoy will never forgive us that, the longest day she
lives. Did you notice her? She wouldn't speak to me. After you came out,
I tried to tell her that we would look out for her and the children; but
all she would say to me was: 'An' fwat would a wheelwright, an' him the
father of a family, be doin' up a tree?'"

They had come now upon the main street of the village, with its
flagstone sidewalk overhung by a lofty canopy of elm-boughs. Here, for
the space of a block, was concentrated such fashionable elegance of
mansions and ornamental lawns as Octavius had to offer; and it was
presented with the irregularity so characteristic of our restless
civilization. Two or three of the houses survived untouched from the
earlier days--prim, decorous structures, each with its gabled centre
and lower wings, each with its row of fluted columns supporting the
classical roof of a piazza across its whole front, each vying with the
others in the whiteness of those wooden walls enveloping its bright
green blinds. One had to look over picket fences to see these houses,
and in doing so caught the notion that they thus railed themselves