"No, thank you, not just yet. I'll step into the front entry a minute.--Sue, run and sit in that rocking-chair on the porch and watch the cows going into the big barn.--Do you remember, Eldress Abby, the second time I came, how you sat me down in the kitchen with a bowl of wild strawberries to hull for supper? They were very small and ripe; I did my best, for I never meant to be careless, but the bowl slipped and fell,--my legs were too short to reach the floor, and I couldn't make a lap,--so in trying to pick up the berries I spilled juice on my dress, and on the white apron you had tied on for me. Then my fingers were stained and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the soft berries, and when you came in and saw me you held up your hands and said, 'Dear, dear! you _have_ made a mess of your work!' Oh, Eldress Abby, they've come back to me all day, those words. I've tried hard to be good, but somehow I've made just such a mess of my life as I made of hulling the berries. The bowl is broken, I haven't much fruit to show, and I am all stained and draggled. I shouldn't have come to Albion on the five-o'clock train--that was an accident; I meant to come at noon, when you could turn me away if you wanted to." "Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remonstrated Abby. "You and the child can sleep in one of the spare chambers at the Office Building and be welcome." "But I want much more than that," said Susanna, tearfully. "I want to come and live here, where there is no marrying nor giving in marriage. I am so tired with my disappointments and discouragements and failures that it is no use to try any longer. I am Mrs. Hathaway, and Sue is my child, but I have left my husband for good and all, and I only want to spend the rest of my days here in peace and bring up Sue to a more tranquil life than I have ever had. I have a little money, so that I shall not be a burden to you, and I will work from morning to night at any task you set me." "I will talk to the Family," said Eldress Abby, gravely; "but there are a good many things to settle before we can say yee to all you ask." "Let me confess everything freely and fully," pleaded Susanna, "and if you think I'm to blame, I will go away at once." "Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty to receive all and try all; then if you should be gathered in, you would unburden your heart to God through the Sister appointed to receive your confession." "Will Sue have to sleep in the children's building away from me?" "Nay, not now; you are company, not a Shaker, and anyway you could keep the child with you till she is a little older; that's not forbidden at first, though there comes a time when the ties of the flesh must be broken! All you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, and without hypocrisy.' That's about all there is to the Shaker creed, and that's enough to keep us all busy." Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and caught her mother's hand.