“It would make a better text for a discourse than some others that meddlesome folks set,” said Lydia, for she had no fear of any one before another, not even the minister or the squire. She stood up. The minister Elihu Eaton’s sober peaked face rising out of his great capes, which shrugged to his ears, looked up at her. “Either,” said she, in a masterful way, and yet with a remembering sweetness, for the minister looked suddenly very old to her--“either Freelove Keith has got to do as I say or I have got to do as he says before we are married, if the banns have been cried a thousand years.” Then she went out into the keeping-room, and presently returned with a tray, on which were set out a decanter of West India Rum, a little silver bowl of loaf-sugar, a tumbler, and a plate of pound-cake. When the minister had partaken of these refreshments, he offered a prayer and took his leave. Lydia courtesied when he went out the door, but her lips were tightly shut again, for Elihu Eaton, in his appeal to the Lord, had spoken with more fire concerning her affairs than he had dared use towards her. “O Lord, make this, Thy handmaiden, to keep to the vows which she has spoken, and let not a froward mind lead her aside into strange paths,” the minister had said, and more, and Lydia could not expostulate. She went into the keeping-room and got supper ready. Lydia Hersey had lived alone ever since her father’s death. All the more reason, people thought, why she should fulfil her marriage contract with Freelove Keith. There was she, living all alone in a large house, with a comfortable income, and there was Freelove, who was no longer so necessary at home since his sister had married and taken her husband there to live, and who could easily manage his farm and live in the Hersey house. There was Freelove, whom everybody liked, yet felt a certain anxiety about, because he had been to sea, and might have seen much evil in foreign ports, going too often to the tavern, people said, and neglecting his farm to go on junketings with idle young men, to Abington or Braintree, and once even over to Boston, and to be away all night. It looked no better, people said, because Squire Perkins’s son went with him, and he was college-learned. It was generally conceded that Abel was not as reliable, and would not make as smart a man, as the old squire. Lydia Hersey saw Abel Perkins again that night. After supper she strolled down the road a little way. She was mindful that Freelove had said he was coming, and she wondered if her rebuff would quite drive him away. Before she started she stood hesitating a moment in the doorway. The evening was cool, and she had put a yellow blanket over her head and bare shoulders. She thought, angrily, that she would not stay at home and watch for Freelove Keith, when he might not come; but, on the other hand, she did not want to go away and never know if he had called.