"David," said his wife next day, as he came whistling up to his cabin from the farm below, "do you mind if I give mother a little help with the weaving? Mattie can't do it. She's right nigh spoiled the counterpane we had on when she came, and since mother's hurt, she can't work the treadles, so now the hotel's open Miss Mayhew may come and find them not half done." "Do I mind? Why should I mind, if you don't 'right nigh' spoil your back and wear yourself out?" "Then I'll go down with you after dinner and see can I patch up Mattie's mistakes. It takes so much patience--a loom does, to understand it." Mattie was the cousin David had imported from the low country to relieve Cassandra from the burden of the work in the home below. Although a disappointment to them, she still did her work after her own fashion, clumsily and slowly, but her Aunt 'Marthy' was never at rest, prodding the dull nature forward, trying to make her take the interest Cassandra had done. David had wisely persuaded his wife to leave them to themselves, to work out the problem of adjustment to the new conditions as best they might, and his persuasions had been of a more peremptory nature than he realized. To Cassandra they had been as commands, but now--when the weaving on which the widow had counted so much was likely to be ruined by Mattie's unskilled hands--the old mother had declared she could not bear to see her niece around and should "pack her off whar she come from." Therefore Cassandra had made her timid request--the first evidence of shrinking from her husband she had ever given. Why was it? he asked himself. What had he ever said or done to make her prefer a request in that way? But it was over in an instant, and her own poised manner returned as they ate and chatted together. Little Hoyle came running up to eat with them. He had conceived a dislike to the home below since the incumbent had come to take his sister's place, and evaded thus, as often as possible, his mother's vigilance. David did not mind the intrusion, but suffered the adoring little chap to sit at his side, ever twisting his small body about to fix his great eyes on David's face, while he plied him with questions and hung on his words too intent to attend to his own eating unless admonished thereto by his sister. "If you don't eat, son, I'll send you back to mother," she threatened. "I won't go," he rebelled joyously. "I'll jes' set here 'longside brothah David." "No, you won't, young man. You'll do whatever sister says. That's what I do." He put his hand on the boy's tousled head and turned him about to his plate, well filled with food still untouched, but he noticed that the child ate listlessly, more as an act of obedience than from a normal desire. He glanced up at his wife and saw that she also noticed Hoyle's languor. They finished the meal in a silence only broken by Hoyle's questions and David's replies, now serious, now teasing and bantering.