Roxy was really very late, and Heman could not help wondering whether she had delayed in starting because she had expected a friendly invitation to ride, "All right," he reflected, bitterly. "She must get used to it." The door opened, and Roxy came in. She had been walking fast, and her color was high. Heman stole one glance at her, under cover of the saluting voices. She was forty years old, yet her hair had not one silver thread, and at that instant of happy animation, she looked strikingly like her elder sister, to whom Heman used to give lozenges when they were boy and girl together, and who died in India. Then Roxy took her place, and Heman bent over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman forgot all about his keeper sitting by the stove, as the old, familiar tunes swelled up in the little room, and one antique phrase after another awoke nerve-cells all unaccustomed nowadays to thrilling. He could remember just when he first learned The Mellow Horn, and how his uncle, the sailor, had used to sing it. "Fly like a youthful hart or roe!" Were there spices still left on the hills of life? Ah, but only for youth to smell and gather! Boldly, with a happy bravado, the choir sang,-- "The British yoke, the Gallic chain, Were placed upon our necks in vain!" And then came the pious climax of Coronation, America, and the Doxology. Above the tumult of voices following the end of rehearsal, some one announced the decision to meet on Wednesday night; and Heman, his bass-viol again in its case, awoke, and saw the Widder putting on her green veil. Rosa Tolman nudged her intimate friend, Laura Pettis, behind Heman's back, and whispered,-- "I wonder if she's had a good time! There 'ain't been a soul for her to speak to, the whole evenin' long!" The other girl laughed, with a delicious sense of fun in the situation, and Heman recoiled; the sound was like a blow in the face. "Say, Heman," said Brad, speaking in his ear. "I guess I'll walk home, so't you can take in Roxy." But Heman had bent his head, and was moving along with the rest, like a man under a burden. "No," said he, drearily. "I can't. You come along." His tone was quite conclusive; and Brad, albeit wondering, said no more. The three packed themselves into the pung, and drove away. Heman was conscious of some dull relief in remembering that he need not pass Roxy again on the road, for he heard her voice ring out clearly from a group near the church. He wondered if anybody would go home with her, and whether she minded the dark "spell o' woods" by the river. No matter! It was of no use. She must get used to her own company. The Widder was almost torpid from her long sojourn by the stove; but the tingling air roused her at last, and she spoke, though mumblingly, remembering her tooth,-- "Proper nice tunes, wa'n't they? Was most on 'em new?"