Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow, while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid, except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet, which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower. Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered “who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily--so white, so bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?” The thrifty housewives said, “it was clear to them that the old lady hadn’t _her_ wits, narry more than the old man, for she left her clothes’-line out all night, when every body knew that dew and rain would rot it; but what could you expect from shiftless city folks?”