Thomas Payne went away the first of May. That evening Charlotte sat on the door-step in the soft spring twilight. Her mother had just come home from her sister Hannah Berry's. "Thomas Payne went this afternoon," her mother said, standing before her. "Did he?" said Charlotte. "You might have had him if you hadn't stuck to a poor stick that ain't fit to tie your shoes up!" Sarah cried out, with sudden bitterness. Her voice sounded like Hannah Berry's. Charlotte knew that was just what her aunt Hannah had said about it. "I don't ask him to tie my shoes up," returned Charlotte. "You can stan' up for him all you want to," said her mother. "You know he's a poor tool, an' he's treatin' you mean. You know he can't begin to come up to a young man like Thomas Payne." "Thomas Payne don't want me, and I don't want him; don't talk any more about it, mother." "I think somebody ought to talk about it," said her mother, and she pushed roughly past Charlotte into the house. Charlotte sat on the door-step a long while. "If Thomas Payne has got anybody out West, I guess she'll be glad to see him," she thought. The fancy pained her, and yet she seemed to see Thomas Payne and Barney side by side, the one like a young prince--handsome and stately, full of generous bravery--the other vaguely crouching beneath some awful deformity, pitiful yet despicable in the eyes of men, and her whole soul cleaved to her old lover. "What we've got is ours," she said to herself. As she sat there a band of children went past, with a shrill, sweet clamor of voices. They were out hanging May-baskets and bunches of anemones. That was the favorite sport of the village children during the month of May. The woods were full of soft, innocent, seeking faces, bending over the delicate bells nodding in the midst of whorls of dark leaves. Every evening, after sundown, there were mysterious bursts of laughter and tiny scamperings around doors, and great balls of bloom swinging from the latchets when they were opened; but no person in sight, only soft gurgles of mirth and delight sounded around a corner of darkness. After Charlotte went to bed that night she thought she heard somebody at the south door. "It is the children with some may-flowers," she thought. But presently she reflected that it was very late for the children to be out. After a little while she got up, and stole down-stairs to the door, feeling her way through the dark house. She opened the south door cautiously, and put her hand out. There were no flowers swinging from the latch as she half expected. Her bare feet touched something on the door-step; she stooped, and there was a great package. Charlotte took it up, and went noiselessly back to her room with it. She lighted a candle, and unfastened the paper wrappings. She gave a little cry. There were yards of beautiful silk shimmering with lilac and silver and rose-color, and there was also a fine lace mantle.