still. The happiest of all experiences had befallen her; not a
succession of joys, but a permanent delight in one unchanging mood. The
evening of his coming had been the first day; and the evening and the
morning had ever since been the same in glory. He came often, sometimes
with Phoebe, sometimes alone; and, being one of the men on whom women
especially lean, Dorcas soon found herself telling him all the poor
trials of her colorless life. Nothing was too small for his notice. He
liked her homely talk of the garden and the church, and once gave up an
hour to spading a plot where she wanted a new round bed. Dorcas had
meant to put lilies there, but she remembered he loved
ladies'-delights; so she gathered them all together from the nooks and
corners of the garden, and set them there, a sweet, old-fashioned
company. "That's for thoughts!" She took to wearing flowers now, not
for the delight of him who loved them, but merely as a part of her
secret litany of worship. She slept deeply at night, and woke with calm
content, to speak one name in the way that forms a prayer. He was her
one possession; all else might be taken away from her, but the feeling
inhabiting her heart must live, like the heart itself.

By the time September had yellowed all the fields, there came a week
when Phoebe's aunt, down at the Hollow, was known to be very ill; so
Phoebe no longer came to care for the parson through the Sunday-school
hour. But the doctor appeared, instead.

"I'm Phoebe," he said, laughing, when Dorcas met him at the door. "She
can't come; so I told her I'd take her place."

These were the little familiar deeds which gilded his name among the
people. Dorcas had been growing used to them. But on the' next Sunday
morning, when she was hurrying about her kitchen, making early