By the window, looking down the road, stood Margaret Tolford. At the first glance there was nothing striking about her personality. Medium in height and colouring, her slight frame was wrapped in a soft white shawl that gave her a fragile air. At a second glance the deep gray eyes, that looked from under a brow narrowed by a quantity of smooth, coal-black hair, were magnetic in their intelligent wonder. Her eyes said, “There is much that I would understand, but I cannot;” whereas a shallower nature would have thought, “I am misunderstood!” The wind whistled in the chimney, and the _pud, pud_, of a heavy flatiron came from the kitchen, with snatches of inharmonious song, as the thick-lipped Polack who was the “help” pummelled the towels and folded them at angles that would have distracted a mathematician. In fact, this very Polack was one of Margaret’s lesser problems, a sort of necessary evil who, in summer, bareheaded and barefooted, pervaded the premises, but having with her gay neckerchief a certain sort of picturesque fitness, which, when brought nearer, booted and confined to the winter kitchen, became an eyesore. Other farmers’ daughters did the cooking and the lighter work, and only had a woman to help with the washing. Margaret had never done manual labour; her mother, dead now two years, had stood between this only child and all hardship, and coaxed the Deacon to send her to a collegiate school when her playdays were over. In the summer holidays she was petted and caressed and kept from soiling her hands, and when at eighteen she was coming home for good to mingle as an equal with her parents and learn her part in life, her mother died, and her father closed the one tender spot in his stern heart around his daughter. So she lived shut up within herself, craving a more intellectual companionship than the neighbourhood furnished, and starving unconsciously for demonstrative affection. Tolford was a silent sort of man, who had been so thoroughly understood by his wife that she seemed to know his unvoiced wishes. Because he showed so few signs of an affection that would have won a hearty response from Margaret, he failed to comprehend the difference between a deeply reserved nature and physical weakness, to which cause he laid her abstraction. His love for her, therefore, took the schooltime form of shielding her from work. He liked to hear her play hymns on Sunday evenings, and was very proud to have her train the children of the Sunday School in their carols, but it never occurred to him to ask her advice in any of his plans, or expect aid from her. She stood apart, not understanding the love her mother had drawn from the stern, lonely man, and while he excused her reserve, and told the neighbours she was delicate and peaky, her only ailment lay in lack of motive. * * * * *