study. And then I would try to swallow down within me the beauty
and wistfulness of it all, and run back to mash the potatoes.

Peg drew Parnassus along the backward road with a merry little
rumble. I think she knew we were going back to the Professor.
Bock careered mightily along the wayside. And I had much time for
thinking. On the whole, I was glad; for I had much to ponder. An
adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim had now become for
me the very gist of life itself. I was fanciful, I guess, and as
romantic as a young hen, but by the bones of George Eliot, I'm sorry
for the woman that never has a chance to be fanciful. Mifflin was
in jail; aye, but he might have been dead and--unrecognizable! My
heart refused to be altogether sad. I was on my way to deliver him
from durance vile. There seemed a kinship between the season and
myself, I mused, seeing the goldenrod turning bronze and droopy
along the way. Here was I, in the full fruition of womanhood, on the
verge of my decline into autumn, and lo! by the grace of God, I had
found my man, my master. He had touched me with his own fire and
courage. I didn't care what happened to Andrew, or to Sabine Farm,
or to anything else in the world. Here were my hearth and my
home--Parnassus, or wherever Roger should pitch his tent. I dreamed
of crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with him at dusk, watching the
skyscrapers etched against a burning sky. I believed in calling
things by their true names. Ink is ink, even if the bottle is marked
"commercial fluid." I didn't try to blink the fact that I was in
love. In fact, I gloried in it. As Parnassus rolled along the road,
and the scarlet maple leaves eddied gently down in the blue October
air, I made up a kind of chant which I called

Hymn for a Middle-Aged Woman (Fat)