Seth followed her with his eyes as she walked up the road, past the old-fashioned latticed front door with its heavy fold of crape hanging on the knocker, and turned from sight at the corner of the house; and the look in his face was soft and admiring, even if it was hardly loverlike. In his trouble--and he felt the bereavement most keenly--it seemed restful and good to have such a girl as Annie about, Indeed, a vague thought that she had never before seemed so sweet and likeable came to him, as he turned again to the hinge, and lightened his heart perceptibly, for almost the last words his mother had spoken to him had been of his future with Annie as his wife. “You will have the farm before long, Seth,” she said, smiling faintly as he stroked her pale hair--somehow to the last it never grew grey--and looked at her through boyish tears, “and Annie will bring you the Warren farm. Her grandmother and I have talked it over many a time. Annie’s a good girl, there’s no better, and she’ll make my boy a good, true wife.” For a year or two back Seth had understood in a nebulous way that his parents had an idea of his eventually marrying Annie, but his mother’s words still came to him in the form of a surprise. First, it had been far from his thoughts that old Mrs. Warren, Annie’s invalid grandmother, would listen to such a thing, much less plan it. There was a bitterness of long standing between the two families, he knew. His father’s younger brother--a halfbrother--named William Fairchild, had married Mrs. Warren’s only daughter under circumstances which he had never heard detailed, but which at least had enraged the mother. Both William and his wife had died, out West he believed, years and years ago, leaving only this girl, Annie Fairchild, who came an orphan to the grandmother she had never seen before, and was reared by her. In this Mrs. Warren and his aunt Sabrina had found sufficient occasion for a quarrel, lasting ever since he could remember, and as he had always understood from his aunt that her battle was in defense of the whole family, he had taken it for granted that he not less than the other Fairchilds was included in Mrs. Warren’s disfavor. He recalled, now, indeed, having heard Annie say once or twice that her grandmother liked him; but this he had taken in a negative way, as if the grandmother of the Capulets had remarked that of all the loathed Montagus perhaps young Romeo was personally the least offensive to her sight.