purity; "as if," the neighbors declared, "S'manthy Ann Ripley went over
'em every morning with a dust-cloth."

It was merely an accident that the carriage and work horses chanced to
be white, and that the original white cats of the family kept on having
white kittens to decorate the front doorsteps. It was not accident,
however, but design, that caused Jabe Slocum to scour the country for a
good white cow and persuade Miss Cummins to swap off the old red one, so
that the "critters" in the barn should match.

Miss Avilda had been born at the White Farm; father and mother had been
taken from there to the old country churchyard, and "Martha, aged 17,"
poor, pretty, willful Martha, the greatest pride and greatest sorrow of
the family, was lying under the apple trees in the garden.

Here also the little Samantha Ann Ripley had come as a child years ago,
to be playmate, nurse, and companion to Martha, and here she had stayed
ever since, as friend, adviser, and "company-keeper" to the lonely Miss
Cummins. Nobody in Pleasant River would have dared to think of her as
anybody's "hired help," though she did receive bed and board, and a
certain sum yearly for her services; but she lived with Miss Cummins on
equal terms, as was the custom in the good old New England villages,
doing the lion's share of the work, and marking her sense of the
situation by washing the dishes while Miss Avilda wiped them, and by
never suffering her to feed the pig or go down cellar.

Theirs had been a dull sort of life, in which little had happened to
make them grow into sympathy with the outside world. All the sweetness
of Miss Avilda's nature had turned to bitterness and gall after Martha's
disgrace, sad home-coming, and death. There had been much to forgive,