She had learned to her surprise that she liked to work; that she took pride in ripping up the old hats that were brought to her and making of them something so fresh, so dainty, constructed so becomingly to the face and figure of the wearer, that it was joy to do the work. She was learning that lesson which all the world was later to learn—that the greatest happiness that was possible to be experienced by any mortal came through the performance of work which was loved and which was beneficial to one’s fellow man. She had been careful from the start not to overwork. When she had sat for a certain length of time with her needle, she laid it down, squared her shoulders, and went for a few minutes to walk over the grasses of the front yard, through the garden where Jemima worked when she had no other employment. This morning she went down the road, her head erect, her nostrils distended, hearing the bird songs above her, sensing the waves of sound sweeping through the air around her, absorbing with her eyes and her ears the rhythms of life that flowed in streams as she passed. She was trying to gauge the quality and the value of the land through which she had been accustomed to driving all her life in her father’s surrey. She was following what was known as the River Road. She paused on the bridge, looking up and down the length of the Ashwater, her heart and soul alive to the beauty of the lazily flowing water, the great sycamores, the big maples and elms which bordered it, to the gold shoots of the willows with their long, graceful leaves and the red of the cornels. She smiled down at the big, delicate pink mallows blushing at the beauty of their own reflections in the clear water. Her heart was weighted with grief over the loss of her father, with pity and regret for her mother. It was filled with anger against Martin Moreland and Junior. She conceded her father’s weakness in having gone on keeping up a business he could not afford and allowing himself to become so heavily involved. At the same time, she was certain that Martin Moreland had deceived him, had deliberately enmeshed him, had not mentioned notes that were overdue, had conducted business in a loose and unbusiness-like manner for the express purpose of accomplishing the downfall of a man whose popularity and place in the community had always been an offence to him. That morning she tried to put these things out of her mind. She tried to think that in some way, whatever happened to her might work out for the best. She tried deliberately to fill her mind with the ripple of water, with the flush of the mallow, with the lark song over the adjacent clover fields.