save on some sultry summer day when Keery flung them open to dispel damp
and must, and the school-children stared in reverentially, and wondered
why old Madam Hyde's eyes followed them as far as they could see.
Visitors came now and then to the kitchen-door, and usurped Keery's
flag-bottomed chair, while they gossiped with her about village affairs;
now and then a friendly spinster with a budget of good advice called
Hitty away from her post, and, after an hour's vain effort to get any
news worth retailing about the Judge from those pale lips, retired full
of disappointed curiosity to tell how stiff that Mehitable Hyde was, and
how hard it was to make her speak a word to one! Friends were what Hitty
read of in the "Spectator," and longed to have; but she knew none of the
Greenfield girls since she left school, and the only companion she had
was Keery, rough as the east wind, but genuine and kind-hearted,--better
at counsel than consolation, and no way adapted to fill the vacant place
in Hitty's heart.

So the years wore away, and Miss Hyde's early beauty went with them. She
had been a blooming, delicate girl,--the slight grace of a daisy in her
figure, wild-rose tints on her fair cheek, and golden reflections in her
light brown hair, that shone in its waves and curls like lost sunshine;
but ten years of such service told their story plainly. When Hitty Hyde
was twenty-six, her blue eyes were full of sorrow and patience, when the
shy lids let their legend be read; the little mouth had become pale, and
the corners drooped; her cheek, too, was tintless, though yet round;
nothing but the beautiful hair lasted; even grace was gone, so long had
she stooped over her father. Sometimes the unwakened heart within her
dreamed, as a girl's heart will. Stately visions of Sir Charles
Grandison bowing before her,--shuddering fascinations over the image of
that dreadful Lovelace,--nothing more real haunted Hitty's imagination.
She knew what she had to do in life,--that it was not to be a happy wife