their mother sometimes had when hitching about in her chair. Paulina
Maria, in her limited field of action, had the quick and unswerving
decision of a general, and people marshalled themselves at her nod,
whether they would or no. She was an example of the insistence of a
type. The prevailing traits of the village women were all intensified
and fairly dominant in her. They kept their houses clean, but she
kept hers like a temple for the footsteps of divinity. Marvellous
tales were told of Paulina Maria's exceeding neatness. It was known
for a fact that the boards of her floors were so arranged that they
could be lifted from their places and cleaned on their under as well
as upper sides. Could Paulina Maria have cleaned the inner as well as
the outer surface of her own skin she would doubtless have been
better satisfied. As it was, the colorless texture of her thin face
and hands, through which the working of her delicate jaws and muscles
could be plainly seen, gave an impression of extreme purity and
cleanliness. "Paulina Maria looks as ef she'd been put to soak in
rain-water overnight," Simon Basset said once, after she had gone out
of the store. Everybody called her Paulina Maria--never Mrs. Judd,
nor Mrs. Adoniram Judd.

The village women were, as a rule, full of piety. Paulina Maria was
austere. She had the spirit to have scourged herself had she once
convicted herself of wrong; but that she had never done. The power of
self-blame was not in her. Paulina Maria had never labored under
conviction of sin; she had had no orthodox conversion; but she set
her slim unswerving feet in the paths of righteousness, and walked
there with her head up. In her the uncompromising spirit of
Puritanism was so strong that it defeated its own ends. The other
women were at times inflexible; Paulina Maria was always rigid. The
others could be severe; Paulina Maria might have conducted an