"I kind o' wanted to know how it was going to be with Eunice, so I stayed," he told his wife afterwards; but he owned that he didn't know much about it after all. "If it had been the old doctor himself, I don't know how she could have talked any other way to him. Friendly? Oh, yes, she was friendly and cool, but not too cool nor too friendly! Be you certain that Justin Everett's wife is dead, Asubah?" "Well, I declare for it! How you talk!" exclaimed Mrs Ainsworth. "As if you don't know as well as I do that she's been dead these two years and more! I hope to mercy you didn't go to saying anything of that kind up there. I _should_ like to see Fidelia Marsh's eyes if she heard any such insinuations about her sister." But the deacon, though he had taken the lead in the conversation, said nothing indiscreet to Fidelia or any one else, and he rose to go at last, but not until Dr Everett came to take his brother away to see a patient. Jabez in the meantime had, by an effective movement on the onion-bed, taken formal possession of the garden. He did not see, or he did not seem to see, his grandfather set out for home, and continued his work then and afterwards to such good purpose, that he had so strengthened his position as to leave nothing more to be said or done when in a few days his grandfather "stepped up" again, to talk the matter over. Fidelia was for many reasons glad that it was in his hands, but she could not reconcile herself to the deacon for having so utterly spoiled to them all the first visit of Dr Justin. And she was not at home when Dr Justin made his second visit, and his last at that time. One night she came home from a long walk with her friend, Susie, to find her sister, as she almost always found her in the twilight, resting on the sofa, and this time again she thought there were traces of tears on her cheeks. After a little she was not so sure about the tears, but she was sure of the peaceful brightness of her sister's smile of welcome, and of the sweet words with which she greeted her. CHAPTER FOUR. A VISIT. "A good place to rest in," Fidelia Marsh was saying to herself, as she passed with her friend Nellie Austin under the great elms whose boughs met over the one long street which makes the larger part of the inland town of Eastwood. "A good place to rest in," she repeated, when the chaise drew up before the door of the large house which was her friend's home.