That day she had no dinner. She made it ready, with a scrupulous exactitude, but she could not eat. She went back to her post at the window. Nobody went by. Of all the neighbors who might have driven to market, not one appeared. Life itself seemed to be stricken from her world. At four o'clock she caught her shawl from its nail, and ran across the field to Lucy. Both sisters were at home, in the still tranquillity of their pursuits, Lucy knitting and Caroline binding shoes. Hetty came in upon them as if a wind had blown her. "Law me!" said Caroline, looking up. "Anything happened?" "No," said Hetty, "nothin' 's happened. I don't know as 't ever will." She sat down and talked recklessly about nothing. A calla bud, yesterday a roll of white, had opened, and the sun lay in its heart. Hetty set her lips grimly, and refused to look at it. Yet, as her voice rang on, the feverish will within her kept telling her what she might say. She might ask for the well-being of the slip set out yesterday, or she might even venture, "I should think you'd move your calla out o' the sun. Won't it wilt the bloom?" Then Lucy might tell Caroline to snip off the bloom and give it to her. But no one spoke of plants. Her breath quickened chokingly, and her heart swelled and made her sick. Suddenly she rose and threw her shawl about her in wild haste. "I must go," she trembled; but at the door Lucy stayed her. "Hetty," she called. Her voice faltered, and her eyes looked soft under wistful brows. "Hetty!" Hetty was waiting, in a tremor of suspense. "Well," she answered, her voice beating upon the word. "What is it?" Still Lucy spoke with diffidence, as she always did when she touched upon her faith. "I was only thinkin'--I dunno 's I can tell you, Hetty--but what you said yesterday, you know, about not believin' there's any God--I was goin' to ask you who you think made the trees an' flowers." Hetty did not answer. She stood there, her hands trembling underneath her shawl. She gripped them, one upon the other, to keep from stretching them for alms. "Well," she answered harshly. "Well!" "Well," said Lucy gently, "that's all." Hetty laughed out stridently. "I'm goin' over to Mis' Flood's," said she, her hand upon the latch. "They've driv' over to Fairfax to spend the day," volunteered Caroline. "Better by half set here." "Then I'm goin' over to Ballard's." She fled down the road so fast that Caroline, watching her compassionately, remarked that she "looked, as if she's sent for," and Lucy said, like a charm, a phrase of the Lord's Prayer. Hetty looked up at the Floods' and groaned, remembering there were plants within. She spoke aloud, satirically:-- "Mebbe I could be the instrument o' the Lord. Mebbe if I climbed into the winder, an' stole a bloom, I could say He give it to me."