There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of
sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend a few
minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand. Here, in the
great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes
rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door, sometimes
stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables, or mixing goodies in a
yellow bowl. The children sit on the steps, stringing beans, shelling peas, or
hulling berries; the cat sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the
visitor feels exiled if he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where
the mother is always busy, is the heart of the farmhouse.

There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in morning-glories,
and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing at the stove was pretty,--oh,
so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His boyish heart went out to her on the instant.
She poured a cup of coffee and walked with it to the table; then an
unexpected, interesting thing happened--something the boy ought not to have
seen, and never forgot. The man, putting out his hand to take the cup, looked
up at the pretty woman with a smile, and she stooped and kissed him.

Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with a
man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the scene
burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that, as he grew
older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time to time, and look
at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know precisely what she was to
mean to him; but before long, when he closed his eyes and the old familiar
picture swam into his field of vision, behold, by some spiritual chemistry,
the pretty woman's face had given place to that of Rose!

All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful
summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road on