"Would you like to go out to tea-drinkings, and all that?" "No, indeed; and I don't suppose I'd be received," she added sadly. "So much the worse for them, then, blast 'em!" said Holcroft wrathfully. "Oh no! I don't feel that way and you shouldn't. When they can, people ought to be sociable and kind." "Of course I'd do any of my neighbors, except Lemuel Weeks, a good turn if it came in my way, but the less I have to do with them the better I'm satisfied." "I'm rested enough to go on now," said Alida quietly. They were not long in reaching the edge of the woodland, from which there was an extended prospect. For some little time they looked at the wide landscape in silence. Alida gave to it only partial attention for her mind was very busy with thoughts suggested by her husband's alienation from his neighbors. It would make it easier for her, but the troubled query would arise, "Is it right or best for him? His marrying me will separate him still more." Holcroft's face grew sad rather than troubled as he looked at the old meeting house and not at the landscape. He was sitting near the spot where he spent that long forenoon a few Sundays before, and the train of thought came back again. In his deep abstraction, he almost forgot the woman near him in memories of the past. His old love and lost faith were inseparable from that little white spire in the distance. Alida stole a glance at him and thought, "He's thinking of her," and she quietly strolled away to look for wild flowers. "Yes," muttered Holcroft, at last. "I hope Bessie knows. She'd be the first one to say it was right and best for me, and she'd be glad to know that in securing my own home and comfort I had given a home to the homeless and sorrowful--a quiet, good woman, who worships God as she did." He rose and joined his wife, who held toward him a handful of trailing arbutus, rue anemones, bloodroot, and dicentras. "I didn't know they were so pretty before," he said with a smile. His smile reassured her for it seemed kinder than any she had yet received, and his tone was very gentle. "His dead wife will never be my enemy," she murmured. "He has made it right with her in his own thoughts." Chapter XXIV. Given Her Own Way