"Where's Meta with that lamp? Go and see what's keeping her." "Sit still," said Mrs. Meadows. She went herself into the kitchen, but no one heard her speak a word; yet the kitchen was not empty. There was a calico-covered lounge that stood across the end of the room; Meta sat there, quite still, her back against the wall. Mrs. Meadows took one look at her; then she lighted the lamp and carried it into the dining-room, and went back and shut herself in with Meta. "'When my mother comes to know,'" hummed Callie. Her face was pale. She hardly knew that she was singing. "Stop that song!" her father shouted. "Go and see what's the matter with your sister." "Sister?" repeated Callie. "Meta is no sister of mine." "She's your tent-mate, then. Ye grew nest-ripe under the same mother's wing." "Meta can use her own wings now, you will find. She grew nest-ripe very young." Father Meadows knew that there was trouble inside of that closed door, as there was trouble inside the white lips and shut heart of his frank and joyous Callie, but it was "the women's business." He went out to attend to his own. Irrigation on the scale of a small cottage garden is tedious work. It has intervals of silence and leaning on a hoe while one little channel fills or trickles into the next one; and the water must be stopped out here, and floated longer there, like the bath over the surface of an etcher's plate. Water was scarce and the rates were high that summer, and there was a good deal of "dry-point" work with a hoe in Father Meadows's garden. He had come to one of the discouraging places where the ground was higher than the water could be made to reach without a deal of propping and damming with shovelfuls of earth. This spot was close to the window of the kitchen chamber, which was "mother's room." She was in there talking to Meta. Her voice was deep with the maternal note of remonstrance; Meta's was sharp and high with excitement and resistance. Her faintness had passed, but Mother Meadows had been inquiring into causes. "I am married to him, mother! He is my husband as much as he can be." "It was never Father Magrath married you, or I should be knowing to it before now." "No; we went before a judge, or a justice, in the town." "In town! Well, that is something; but be sure there is a wrong or a folly somewhere when a man takes a young girl out of her home and out of her church to be married. If Henniker had taken you 'soberly, in the fear of God'"-- "He _was_ sober!" cried Meta. "I never saw him any other way."