fourth wife. This was a matter of some regret, for there was a
general feeling that it would be a good thing for the Baxter
girls to have some one to help with the housework and act as a
buffer between them and their grim and irascible parent. As for
the women of the village, they were mortified that the Deacon had
been able to secure three wives, and refused to believe that the
universe held anywhere a creature benighted enough to become his
fourth.

The first, be it said, was a mere ignorant girl, and he a
beardless youth of twenty, who may not have shown his true
qualities so early in life. She bore him two sons, and it was a
matter of comment at the time that she called them, respectively,
Job and Moses, hoping that the endurance and meekness connected
with these names might somehow help them in their future
relations with their father. Pneumonia, coupled with profound
discouragement, carried her off in a few years to make room for
the second wife, Waitstill's mother, who was of different fibre
and greatly his superior. She was a fine, handsome girl, the
orphan daughter of up-country gentle-folks, who had died when she
was eighteen, leaving her alone in the world and penniless.

Baxter, after a few days' acquaintance, drove into the dooryard
of the house where she was a visitor and, showing her his two
curly-headed boys, suddenly asked her to come and be their
stepmother. She assented, partly because she had nothing else to
do with her existence, so far as she could see, and also because
she fell in love with the children at first sight and forgot, as
girls will, that it was their father whom she was marrying.