potatoes, when apples failed to be in season; often her wickets broke,
and stood up in two ragged horns. Sometimes one fell away altogether,
and Della, like the planets, kept an unseen track. Once or twice, the
mistaken benevolence of others gave her real distress. The minister's
daughter, noting her solitary game, mistook it for forlornness, and, in
the warmth of her maiden heart, came to ask if she might share. It was
a timid though official benevolence; but Della's bright eyes grew dark.
She clung to her kitchen chair.

"I guess I won't," she said, and, in some dim way, everybody began to
understand that this was but an intimate and solitary joy. She had
grown so used to spreading her banquets for one alone that she was
frightened at the sight of other cups upon the board; for although
loneliness begins in pain, by and by, perhaps, it creates its own
species of sad and shy content.

Della did not have a long life; and that was some relief to us who were
not altogether satisfied with her outlook here. The place she left need
not be always desolate. There was a good maiden sister to keep the
house, and Eben and the children would be but briefly sorry. They could
recover their poise; he with the health of a simple mind, and they as
children will. Yet he was truly stunned by the blow; and I hoped, on
the day of the funeral, that he did not see what I did. When we went
out to get our horse and wagon, I caught my foot in something which at
once gave way. I looked down--at a broken wicket and a withered apple
by the stake.

Quite at the other end of the town is a dooryard which, in my own mind,
at least, I call the traveling garden. Miss Nancy, its presiding
mistress, is the victim of a love of change; and since she may not