"I took cold leaving off my apron," Mrs. Sanford remarked. "I always do."

"That is a slight cause, daughter Britann," said grandmother. "Do'st thee feel sure there was no other?"

"I suppose I know when I take cold," she retorted. "I always take cold if I leave off my apron; and, if I go to a tea-party, I always wear my apron under my dress."

"I declare!" exclaimed Patty, rushing in like a whirlwind. "I'll never speak to that horrid Tom Putnam again to the longest day I live!"

"Softly, softly," said the old lady. "Thee do'st not wish to make promises and break them. What disturbs thee?"

"It's about you, grandmother. He dared to say you were not married."

"Not married?"

"Not married!" echoed Mrs. Sanford. "And your family always held out to be so much better than ours, and so leading me to marry into it, and help bear the disgrace!"

"Hush, mother!" Patty said impatiently. "There isn't any disgrace. It is only a blunder of Mr. Putnam's."

"Then, your father ought to sue him for libel. I always told you I didn't approve of your dawdling about with that lawyer, with Clarence Toxteth at your beck and call. But you always would have your own way, and disgrace us all by keeping company with the man that slanders your family."

"Slanders our family!" Patty returned, her eyes blazing. "Who said he slandered the family? If he isn't disgraced by my company, I'm sure I am not by his. I shouldn't be ashamed to sweep the streets for him to walk on!"

"You'd demean yourself, I dare say, when you might have the streets swept for you."

"I"—began her daughter.

"Daughter Patience," interposed her grandmother, laying her hand upon the girl's arm, "thee had best not say it."

By a strong effort Patty repressed the retort which had sprung to her lips.

"What does it mean, grandmother?" she asked, when a moment's silence had given her more composure. "Tom Putnam says he can find no proof of your marriage."

"I told thy father to tell him to go to the town-records."

"He says he has, and it is not there."

"Then, the man that married us neglected his duty," the old lady said with gentle severity. "He was a Methodist preacher at Quinnebasset; for we had only one preacher here, and he was away; and that, as thee knows, was before I received light to become a Friend."

"But didn't you have a certificate?" asked Mrs. Sanford.

"No. The man promised us one; but, though he was a man of God, he kept his word no better than one of the world's people, and we never got it."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Flossy, entering. "I told Will I didn't think this play would be very intelligible to the audience; and he said they would have the advantage of the actors, if it were. Was that what you were talking about?"

"Flossy," her aunt said disdainfully, "don't be so silly!"

"Thank you, aunt Britann. I prefer to be silly." So saying, she made her aunt a graceful courtesy, and then sat down. "What were you talking about?"

Patty explained; and her cousin flourished her bowl of pop-corn wildly about with excitement.

"Yes, of course," Flossy burst out. "I knew there was something sure to come of it when I ran away; and there it was in the binding of this book, and the pew was so hard I thought I should die. This cover, you know, is almost torn off, and there's where Linda Thaxter married William French; I mean Edward French, no, Edward Sanford—at least you know what I mean."

Flossy always became less and less intelligible as she became excited; and Patty, knowing this by frequent experience, seized her by both shoulders.

"Wait!" she said. "Stop short there. Now, what are you trying to say?"

By degrees they elicited from her the story of the psalmody in the Presbyterian Church at Samoset; and Dr. Sanford, when he came home, declared that this might prove a decisive piece of evidence. He laughed at Patty's anger, and requested her to write a note to the lawyer, informing him of Flossy's story.

It amused him to see his daughter nibbling her pen over the epistle she had vainly tried to avoid writing.

She wrote and tore up a dozen notes before she would send one. There sat the doctor in his easy-chair, apparently reading, but with his peculiar faint smile curling the corners of his lips sufficiently to show that he appreciated her difficulty. The note when completed read as follows:—

Tuesday Evening.

Flossy saw in the binding of a hymn-book at Samoset a notice of grandmother's wedding. She will tell you about it, if you will call on her.

Patience Sanford.

P.S.—I have to beg your pardon for my rudeness this afternoon.

The effect of this note was to bring the lawyer to the cottage the next morning. As mischievous fortune chose to have it, Patty was on the piazza, selecting for pressing the brightest of the scarlet and russet woodbine-leaves which had been spared by the storm. She knew his step upon the walk; and, although she would not turn, she was prepared to meet him with a kindness which should atone for yesterday's harshness. But she defeated her own intention. Meaning to be gracious, she yet was not willing to give the first sign of abandoning hostilities, expecting her lover to know instinctively the state of her mind, and to approach her in a corresponding temper.

The lover's eyes shone with a wistful tenderness as he regarded the slender figure upon which the bright leaves fell in showers of gold and green and scarlet. His relations with Patty troubled him, and yet he knew not how they might be improved. He knew women from books rather than from nature, and his knowledge profited him little in his own dilemma. The sudden changes in Patty were incomprehensible to him. He had accepted her apology as a necessary consequence of the fact that she was a lady: what it had cost her, or how she had passed from anger to tenderness, he did not suspect.

She, on her side, interpreted him no better. His self-restraint she called coldness; and, when he failed to respond to a softened mood, she felt that her affection found no response in his heart. This morning she was unconsciously in a frame of mind which would render her dissatisfied, whatever his attitude: had he divined her relenting, she would have thought him presuming, as now she called him cold. The only comfort Tom might extract from such a situation was the fact, hardly likely to occur to him, that she was a thousand times more displeased with herself than with him.

"Good-morning," the gentleman said, stepping upon the piazza.

"Good-morning," she returned, keeping her face from him.

"It is a right royal day after the storm," he said, rather for the sake of saying something than from any active interest in the weather.

"Yes," she assented laconically.

"How do your theatricals come on?" asked he.

"'As the man went to be hung,—very slowly,' to use Will's slang, or figure of speech as Flossy calls it."

"This world," the lawyer said rather irrelevantly, "is chiefly figures of speech."

"What does that signify?"

"It signifies that you think of our talk yesterday hyperbolically."

Patty felt herself growing flushed and perturbed. Their conversation hid completely the sentiments underlying it. Her tenderness was met by apparent indifference. What was this talk of figures of speech, when he should have said simply "I love you."

"On the contrary," she replied, "I do not think of our conversation yesterday at all."

"Then, why do you so resolutely keep your face from me?"

"Certainly not because I said any thing yesterday that I am ashamed of."

Putnam took from his pocket her note, and read aloud the postscript.

"It is very generous in you to fling that in my face," she exclaimed, turning suddenly.

"It was abominable," he laughed; "but it made you show your face, and that's worth sinning for."

"Why did you keep my note?" she asked, as he carefully replaced it in his pocket-book. "You told me once you never kept any letters but business ones."

"Oh! I always preserve yours. Every rule has its exception."

"I am flattered," she said, softening a little.

"You've no reason to be," he retorted saucily. "I only keep them because I suppose you are sure to demand them some time; and, if I couldn't return them, you'd say I kept them."

"Then, I demand them now."

"You shall have them when you give me mine."

"You may have them this minute," she exclaimed.

"Ah!" retorted he, laughing. "I have discovered what I wanted to know. You have cared enough for them to keep them."

"You are the most hateful man on the face of the earth!" she said angrily, running into the house, and up to her own chamber.

She gathered all his notes together, with the trifles she had treasured, even before she confessed to herself that she cared for him,—this odd stone from Mackerel Cove, that Chinese coin he took from his watch-guard one day as a reward for a joke she made, a dry and musty cracker upon which he drew at a picnic a clever caricature of Mrs. Brown's frowsy head, a few dried flowers, and a pencil-sketch or two. She gathered them together, meaning to make a packet of them to put into Tom's hands before he left the house. Then she began to read over the notes, simple things that said little, and from another would have had no especial meaning or value. Here he asked her if he might drive her to a picnic at Wilk's Run; this was to say that he was going to Boston, and would be glad to execute any commissions for her,—trifling things, but written by his hand. She turned over his gifts, keepsakes which any friend might give to another. She recalled, while making up her packet, the circumstances in which each came to her. Memories exhale from mementos as odors from faded roses laid long away among our treasures. Patty ended by a brief shower of tears, and by replacing the souvenirs in the box whence they came. Her tears cleared her mental atmosphere as a thunder-shower may the air of a sultry day. Ten minutes later she flashed down stairs, bright, trenchant, and gay as a dragon-fly. She comforted herself with the illogical conclusion, "After all, I love him so deeply, he must love me."

Meanwhile the lawyer had questioned Flossy. She described so bewilderingly the situation of "this pew, you know," that it was quite impossible to form the slightest idea of its position. He therefore concluded to take the young lady herself to Samoset; and, just as Patty descended from her chamber, the two drove away. The psalmody was found without trouble; and the printed slip in the binding was eventually traced to the newspaper from which it was cut, furnishing the link which had before been missing in the evidence needed to secure the long-talked-of pension.