The window was open. She could hear faintly the rasp of her father’s chisel upon the boughs of old Widow Nye’s weeping-willow. She could hear the voices of her mother and sisters, who had gone back to their work over the dye-kettle. After a while she saw Submit going down to the shore for more drift-wood. “That is my work,” she thought to herself with wonder. She could not understand her mother’s treatment of her. It was very pleasant and grand to be sitting in state in the best room, with the tortoise-shell comb in her hair, working her sampler, and be rid of all ruder toil, yet she finally grew uneasy. She laid down her sampler, and pulled open the front door, which was seldom used, and hard to move, being swollen with the sea dampness. Then she stole around the house towards the group at the dye-kettle. She felt scared and uncertain without knowing why. Her mother called out sharply when she caught sight of her, and waved her back. “Can’t I go down for more drift-wood?” pleaded Persis, timidly. “Back into the house!” ordered her mother, speaking against the wind, which was now blowing hard. “Back with ye! Out here in this wind! Would you be as black as an Injun? Go back to your sampler!” Persis crept back, bewildered. The other two daughters looked at each other. Then Rebecca spoke out boldly. “Mother, what is all this?” said she. “Perhaps you will know sometime,” replied Sarah Buckley, smiling mysteriously, and she would say no more. Persis continued to sit at the front-room window with her sampler in her hands. She crossstitched a letter forlornly and laboriously, with frequent glances out at the rosy wind-swept marshes and the blue dazzle of sea beyond. She never dreamed of disputing her mother’s wishes further. Persis Buckley, although full of nervous force, had also a strange docility of character. She stitched on her sampler all the afternoon. When it came time to prepare supper, her mother would not even then let her out in the kitchen to help, as was her wont. “Stay where you be,” said she, when Persis appeared on the threshold. And the little maid remained in her solitary state until the meal was ready, and she was bidden forth to it. There was a little sweet cake beside her plate on the table, one of those which her mother kept in a stone jar for company. Nobody else had one. Persis looked at it doubtfully when she had finished her bread. “Eat it,” said her mother, and Persis ate it, but it tasted strange to her. She wondered if her mother had put anything different in the sweet cake. Persis had lately sat up until the nine-o’clock bell rang, knitting or paring sweet apples to dry, but now her mother sent her off to bed at half past seven. “Can’t I sit up and help Submit and Rebecca pare apples?” she begged, but her mother was inexorable.