“Needn’t tell her that a widder could wear such long switchin’ gowns, and think just as much of the grave by the gate. She knew better, and Miss Graham was beginnin’ to get frillicky. She could see through a millstone.” This was Mrs. Simms’ opinion of the long gored dress which Jimmie noticed at once, admiring the graceful, symmetrical appearance it gave to Annie’s figure, just as he admired the softening effect which the plain white collar and cuffs had upon Annie’s dress. When he was home before, everything about her was black of the deepest dye; but now the sombreness of her attire was relieved somewhat, and Jimmie liked the change. He could look at her without seeing constantly before him the grave by the churchyard gate, where slept the man whose widow she was. She did not seem like a widow, she was so young; only twenty-one, as Jimmie knew from Rose, who, delighted with the friendly meeting between her brother and friend, was again building castles of what might be. Could Rose have had her choice in the matter, she would have selected Tom for Annie. He was older, steadier, while his letters seemed very much like Annie. Tom had found the Saviour of whom Isaac Simms once talked so earnestly in the prison house at Richmond. He was better than Jimmie, Rose reasoned, and more likely to suit Annie. Still, if it were to be otherwise, she was satisfied, and in a quiet way she aided and abetted Jimmie in all his plans to be frequently alone with Annie. It was Annie who rode with him when Mrs. Carleton was indisposed, and Rose did not care to go,—Annie who read to him the books which Rose pronounced too stupid for anything,—Annie who brought his cane, and Annie who finally attended to his wounded arm. The physician did not come one day; Mrs. Carleton was sick; and Rose positively could not touch it and so Annie timidly offered her services, and Jimmie knew from actual experience just how her soft fingers felt upon his arm, his pulse throbbing and the blood tingling in every vein as she dressed his wound so carefully, asking anxiously if she hurt him very badly. He would have suffered martyrdom sooner than lose the opportunity of feeling those soft fingers upon his flesh, and so it came about that Annie was his surgeon, and ministered daily to the wound which healed far too rapidly to suit the young man, who began to shrink from a return to the life he had found so irksome.