He would go home, tell Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and
ask her if she would try her hand at making him over.




CHAPTER VI


These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood on the
Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new tavern
on Tory Hill, near the Meeting-House.

Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and
after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk,
aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending
to call on some of his old neighbours, with the view of hearing the
village news and securing some information which might help him to decide
when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy Wentworth's
feet. They were pretty feet! He remembered that fact well enough under
the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and odours. He was
restless, miserable, anxious, homesick--not for Detroit, but for some
heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan's shepherd boy in the Valley
of Humiliation, he carried "the herb called Hearts-ease in his bosom,"
for he was at last loving consciously.

How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds! It must have
been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly
prosperous. There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he
remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the