lawyer's office. She sat down at an open kitchen window and folded
her hands. Outside was a broad, green yard, inclosed on two sides by
the Maxwell house and barn. A drive-way led to the barn, and on the
farther side a row of apple-trees stood. There was a fresh wind
blowing, and the apple blossoms were floating about. The drive was
quite white with them in places, and they were half impaled upon the
sharp green blades of grass.

Over through the trees Mrs. Field could see the white top of a market
wagon in a neighboring yard, and the pink dress of a woman who stood
beside it trading. She watched them with a dull wonder. What had she
now to do with market wagons and daily meals and housewifely matters?
That fair-haired woman in the pink dress seemed to her like a woman
of another planet.

This narrow-lived old country woman could not consciously moralize.
She was no philosopher, but she felt, without putting it into
thoughts, as if she had descended far below the surface of all
things, and found out that good and evil were the root and the life
of them, and the outside leaves and froth and flowers were fathoms
away, and no longer to be considered.

At ten o'clock she put on her bonnet and shawl, and set out for the
lawyer's office. She locked the front door, put the key under a
blind, and proceeded down the front walk into the street.

The spring was earlier here than in Green River. She started at a
dancing net-work of leaf shadows on the sidewalk. They were the first
she had seen that season. There was a dewy arch of trees overhead,
and they were quite fully leaved out. Mr. Tuxbury was in his office