This was the more marked from the fact that she was a pretty girl--or if not precisely pretty, very attractive and winning in face. No other girl of the neighborhood had so fine and regular a profile, or such expressive, dark eyes, or so serenely intelligent an expression. It had been whispered at one time that Reuben Tracy, the school-master, was likely to make a match of it with her, but this had faded away again as a rootless rumor; by this time everybody on the Burfield road tacitly understood that eventually she was to be the wife of her cousin Seth, when it “came time for the two farms to join.” And she had grown accustomed long since to the furtive, half-awed, half-covetous look which men cast upon her, without suspecting the spirit of reluctant renunciation underlying it. She met Milton Squires on the road, close in front of the Fairchild’s house, this morning, and, nodding to him, passed on. She did not particularly note the gaze he bent upon her as she went by, and which followed her afterward, almost to the Fairchild gate. If she had done so, and could have read all its meaning, she would not have gone on with so unruffled a face, for it was a look to frighten an honest young woman--an intent, hungry, almost wolfish look, unrelieved by so much as a glimmer of the light of manliness. But she was alike unconscious of his thoughts and of the gossip he had heard at the corners. Certainly no listener who followed her to the gate, where she encountered Seth at work screwing on a new hinge, would have gathered from the tone or words of the greeting on either side any testimony to confirm the common supposition that they were destined for each other. “Good morning, Seth,” she said, halting while he dragged the great gate open for her, “you’re all through breakfast, I suppose?” “No, I think Albert and his wife are at the table still. We didn’t call them when the rest got up, you know. They’re not used to country ways.” “Anybody else here?” “No, except John.” “Oh, I’m so glad he came. That Lize Wilkins has been telling everybody he wouldn’t come on Sabrina’s account. And it would have looked _so_ bad.” “Yes, Lize Wilkins talks too much. All John ever said was that he wouldn’t stay here in the house any more than he could help. It’s too bad he can’t get along better with Aunt; it would make things so much pleasanter.” “How’s your father, Seth? He seemed at first to take it pretty hard.” “He appeared a little brighter yesterday, after Albert came, but he’s very poorly this morning. Poor old man, it makes a sad difference with him--more I suppose than with us boys, even with me, who never have been away from her hardly for a day.” “Yes, Seth, a boy outgrows his mother, I suppose, but for an old couple who have lived together forty years a separation like this must be awful. I shall go up to the house now.”