She remembered driving with him into Liddleshorn, just as Pamela had to-day driven in with his son, and choosing the flowery carpet, the round table, the piano--on which she could never hope to play a note. Neighbors had condoled with her on the prospect of a new wife at Folly Corner. She had said nothing, by his wish--he was a taciturn man. But she remembered the flutter of triumph which had worked behind her dry lips all the time. She knew that _she_ was to be the bride of whom they gossiped and about whose appearance they speculated. What might have been! He had been dead more than thirty years, and she had dutifully kept the secret of his weakness. Not even Jethro knew that there had been love passages, of a fairly practical sort--on one side at least--between Gainah and his father. Her courting scenes had been seasoned with matter-of-fact reference to the crops or the prospects of early ducklings. She had always been grim and unbending. What might have been! If only the master of Folly Corner had not been pitched out of the high gig. His head had cracked on a heap of big stones by the road, piled high all ready for autumn breaking. She remembered so well the day they brought him home. It was on a Monday, and she had, for once, managed to cut her nails without thinking of a fox’s tail--sure sign of a present. That was the present they brought her--the dying body of the substantial man, who loved her in his common-sense way, who would have redeemed her from service. She remembered the day of the funeral. It was a cold day. The bereft house had seemed to rock and moan with every wail of the agonized wind outside. The front door, through which they carried the long, wide coffin, was flung widely back by her orders until the burial service had been read at the church. If that had not been done there would have been another death within the year. Bitterly as she had been disappointed and foiled, she did not want to die. Neither did she want baby Jethro to die; she loved him a great deal better than she had loved his father--there was no ulterior motive mixed up with her regard for the child. The farmer had not even made a will in her favor. He had not left her one penny. She stayed on as paid housekeeper, the conclave of relatives deciding that it would be best. Mrs. Turle, the dead man’s sister, paid her quarterly. She stayed on. She managed the farm until Jethro grew up. She managed Jethro--had never left off managing him. She was a masterful woman. And now she was to be put aside, like the pair of china figures which had lost an arm apiece, and which stared at each other hopelessly on their dim attic shelf. Jethro came out from the closet, looking handsome and happy. Pamela, still on the chair, was softly humming a gay little air.