as she did that under Agatha's?" asked the deacon, eying his wife
with just the suspicion of a malicious twinkle in his eye.

"I am not the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in town,"
retorted his wife, clicking her needles as she went on knitting.

In Mr. Sprague's house on the opposite side of the road, Squire
Fisher was relating some old tales of bygone Portchester days. "I
knew Agatha when she was a girl," he avowed. "She had the grandest
manners and the most enchanting smile of any rich or poor man's
daughter between the coast and Springfield. She did not dress in
calico then. She wore the gayest clothes her father could buy.
her, and old Jacob was not without means to make his daughter the
leading figure in town. How we young fellows did adore her, and
what lengths we went to win one of her glorious smiles! Two of us,
John and James Zabel, have lived bachelors for her sake to this
very day; but I hadn't courage enough for that; I married and"--
something between a sigh and a chuckle filled out the sentence.

"What made Philemon carry off the prize? His good looks?"

"Yes, or his good luck. It wasn't his snap; of that you may be
sure. James Zabel had the snap, and he was her first choice, too,
but he got into some difficulty--I never knew just what it was,
but it was regarded as serious at the time--and that match was
broken off. Afterwards she married Philemon. You see, I was out of
it altogether; had never been in it, perhaps; but there were three
good years of my life in which I thought of little else than
Agatha. I admired her spirit, you see. There was something more
taking in her ways than in her beauty, wonderful as that was. She