“But there, she can afford to,” said Aunt Hitty Tarbox; “she’s pretty middlin’ wealthy for Edgewood. And it’s lucky she is, for she ’bout feeds that boy o’ Croft’s. No wonder he wants her to fill him up, after six years of the Widder Buck’s victuals. Aurelia Buck can take good flour and sugar, sweet butter and fresh eggs, and in ten strokes of her hand she can make ’em into something the very hogs’ll turn away from. I declare, it brings the tears to my eyes sometimes when I see her coming out of Croft’s Saturday afternoons, and think of the stone crocks full of nasty messes she’s left behind her for that innocent man and boy to eat up . . . Anthony goes to see Miss Butterfield consid’able often. Of course it’s awstensibly to walk home with Davy, or do an errand or something, but everybody knows better. She went down to Croft’s pretty nearly every day when his cousin Maria from Bridgton come to house-clean. Maria suspicioned something, I guess. Anyhow, she asked me if Miss Butterfield’s two hundred a year was in gov’ment bonds. Anthony’s eyesight ain’t good, but I guess he could make out to cut cowpons off . . . It would be strange if them two left-overs should take an’ marry each other; though, come to think of it, I don’t know’s ’t would neither. He’s blind, to be sure, and can’t see her scarred face. It’s a pity she ain’t deef, so ’t she can’t hear his everlastin’ fiddle. She’s lucky to get any kind of a husband; she’s too humbly to choose. I declare, she reminds me of a Jack-o’-lantern, though if you look at the back of her, or see her in meetin’ with a thick veil on, she’s about the best appearin’ woman in Edgewood . . . I never seen anybody stiffen up as Anthony has. He had me make him three white shirts and three gingham ones, with collars and cuffs on all of ’em. It seems as if six shirts at one time must mean something out o’ the common!” Aunt Hitty was right; it did mean something out of the common. It meant the growth of an all-engrossing, grateful, divinely tender passion between two love-starved souls. On the one hand, Lyddy, who though she had scarcely known the meaning of love in all her dreary life, yet was as full to the brim of all sweet, womanly possibilities of loving and giving as any pretty woman; on the other, the blind violin maker, who had never loved any woman but his mother, and who was in the direst need of womanly sympathy and affection. Anthony Croft, being ministered unto by Lyddy’s kind hands, hearing her sweet voice and her soft footstep, saw her as God sees, knowing the best; forgiving the worst, like God, and forgetting it, still more like God, I think. And Lyddy? There is no pen worthy to write of Lyddy. Her joy lay deep in her heart like a jewel at the bottom of a clear pool; so deep that no ripple or ruffle on the surface could disturb the hidden treasure. If God had smitten these two with one hand, he had held out the other in tender benediction.