never really out of his planning. He might be sitting on his rooftree
squaring the shingling; bargaining with Eli Goss, the stone-cutter;
renewing the rock salt for Alderwith's steers; but running through
every occupation was the memory of Hannah's pale distracting face, the
scarlet thread of the lips she was continually biting, her slender
solid body.

He had heard that her mother was like that when she was young; but
looking at Mrs. Braley's spent being, hearing her thin complaining
voice, it seemed impossible. People who had known her in her youth
asserted that it was so. Phebe too, they said, was the same--Phebe who
had left Greenstream nine years ago, when she was seventeen, to become
an actress in the great cities beyond the mountains. This might or
might not be a fact. Calvin always doubted that any one else could have
Hannah's charm.

However, he had never seen Phebe; he had moved from a distant part of
the county to the principal Greenstream settlement after she had gone.
But the legend of Phebe's beauty and talent was a part of the Braley
household. Mrs. Braley told it as a distinguished trait that Phebe
would never set her hand in hot dishwater. Calvin noted that Hannah was
often blamed for domestic negligence, but this and far more advanced
conduct in Phebe was surrounded by a halo of superiority.

After supper, in view of the fact of their courtship, Calvin and Hannah
were permitted to sit undisturbed in the formality of the parlor. The
rest of the family congregated with complete normality in the kitchen.
The parlor was an uncomfortable chamber with uncomfortable elaborate
chairs in orange plush upholstery, a narrow sofa, an organ of highly
varnished lightwood ornamented with scrolled fretwork, and a cannon