there came floods of tears. Some women seem to have set out with the
idea that life's a desert for them to cross, and they've laid in a
supply of water-bags accordingly,--but it's the meanest weapon! And then
again, there's men that are iron, and not to be bent under calamities,
that these tears can twist round your little finger. Well, I suppose
Faith concluded 'twas no use to go hungry because her bread wasn't
buttered on both sides, but she always acted as if she'd condescended
ninety degrees in marrying Dan, and Dan always seemed to feel that he'd
done her a great injury; and there it was.

I kept in the house for a time; mother was worse.--and I thought the
less Dan saw of me the better; I kind of hoped he'd forget, and find his
happiness where it ought to be. But the first time I saw him, when Faith
had been his wife all the spring, there was the look in his eyes that
told of the ache in his heart. Faith wasn't very happy herself, of
course, though she was careless; and she gave him trouble,--keeping
company with the young men just as before; and she got into a way of
flying straight to me, if Dan ventured to reprove her ever so lightly;
and stormy nights, when he was gone, and in his long trips, she always
locked up her doors and came over and got into my bed; and she was one
of those that never listened to reason, and it was none so easy for me,
you may suppose.

Things had gone on now for some three years, and I'd about lived in my
books,--I'd tried to teach Faith some, but she wouldn't go any farther
than newspaper stories,--when one day Dan took her and me to sail, and
we were to have had a clam-chowder on the Point, if the squall hadn't
come. As it was, we'd got to put up with chicken-broth, and it couldn't
have been better, considering who made it. It was getting on toward the
cool of the May evening, the sunset was round on the other side of the