I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that. And I
could pick up after him! Now every room in my house is clean, and every
closet and bureau drawer, too; I can't start drawin' in another rug, for
I've got all the rugs I can step foot on. I dried so many apples last
year I shan't need to cut up any this season. My jelly and preserves
ain't out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this village,
without a man to take steps for and trot 'round after! There's just
three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the rest
of us is all old maids and widders. No wonder the men-folks die, or move
away like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks ain't
healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."




CHAPTER III


Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical
difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days
of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking as she wiped the paint of the
Peabody pew. Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no capital to
invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching offered him
only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he were to stay at
home and keep his mother company.

"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbours.

"Good Heavens!" It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold
of! That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble