Early in the autumn, Deacon Little's wife came one morning to the house and asked to see Hetty alone. Hetty met her with great coolness and remained standing, with evident purpose to regard the interview as simply one of business. As heartily as it was in Hetty Gunn's nature to dislike any one, and that was very heartily, she disliked Mrs. Little.

Again and again, during the six months that James and Sally had been living in her house, Hetty had asked Deacon and Mrs. Little to come and spend the day with them there. The deacon always had come alone, bringing feeble apologies for Mrs. Little, on score of headaches, previous engagements, and so on; but privately, to Hetty, he had confessed the truth, saying,--

"You see, Hetty, she hasn't spoken to Sally yet; and she says she never will: just to see her on the street, gives her a dreadful nervous headache, sometimes for two days. Mrs. Little's nerves are too much for her always: she ain't strong, you know, Hetty."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Hetty at last, bluntly. "It isn't nerves, it's temper, and a most unchristian temper too, begging your pardon. Deacon, I know she's your wife. If I were Jim, I'd never go near her, never, so long as she wouldn't speak to Sally. I shan't ask her again, and you may tell her so; and you may tell her, too, that I say I'd rather take my chance of being forgiven for what Sally's done than for what she's doing." And Hetty strode up and down her piazza wrathfully.

"There are plenty of people in town who do come here, and do speak to Sally," she continued; "and ever so many of them have told me how much they were coming to like her. She hasn't got any great force I know. If she had had, such a fellow as your Jim couldn't have led her away as he did: but she's got all the force the Lord gave her; and if ever there was a girl that repented for a sin, and atoned for it too, it's Sally; and I'd a good deal rather be in her place to-day, than in the place of any of the people that set themselves up as too good to speak to her.

She's a loving, patient-souled creature, and she's been a real comfort to me ever since she came into my house; and anybody that won't speak to her needn't speak to me, that's all." Poor Deacon Little twirled his hat in his hands, and moved about uneasily on his chair, during Hetty's excited speech. When he spoke, his distress was so evident in his voice that Hetty relented and was ashamed of herself instantly.

"Don't be too hard on Mrs. Little, Hetty," he said, "you know Jim was her favorite of all the children; and she can't never see it anyways but that Sally's been his ruin. Now I don't see it that way; and I've always tried to be good to Sally, in all ways that I could be, things being as they were at home. You know a man ain't always free to do's he likes, Hetty. He can't go against his wife, leastways not when she's feeble like Mrs. Little."

"No, no, Deacon Little," Hetty hastened to say, "I never meant to reproach you. Sally always says you've been good to her. I'm very sorry that I spoke so about Mrs. Little; not that I can take a word of it back, though," added Hetty, her anger still rising hotly at mention of the name; "but I'll never say a word to you about it again. It isn't fair."

Deacon Little repeated this conversation to his wife, and told Hetty that he had done so. It was therefore with great surprise that Hetty found herself on this morning face to face in her own home with Mrs.

Little.

"What in the world can have brought her here?" thought Hetty, as she walked slowly towards the sitting-room, "no good I'll be bound;" and it was with a look almost of defiance that she stood before her, waiting for her to speak. Mrs. Little with all her immovability of prejudice was a timid woman, and moreover was especially afraid of Hetty Gunn. Hetty's independent, downright, outspoken ways were alarming to her nervous, conservative, narrow-minded soul.

"I expect you're surprised to see me here, Hetty," she began.

"Very much," interrupted Hetty curtly, in a hard tone. A long silence ensued, which Hetty made no movement to break, but stood with her arms folded, looking Mrs. Little in the eye.

"I came--to--tell--to let you know--Mr. Little he wanted me to come and tell you--he didn't like to--" she stammered.

Hetty's quick instinct took alarm.

"If it's any thing you've got to say against that poor girl out there,"

pointing to the garden, where Sally was busy tying up chrysanthemums "you may as well save yourself the trouble. I shan't hear it," and Hetty looked her unwelcome visitor still more defiantly in the face.

Mrs. Little colored, and stung at last into a command of her organs of speech, said, not without dignity:

"You needn't suppose that I wish to do any thing to injure the woman my son has married. It was Jim who asked his father to tell you--"

"For goodness' sake, do say what it is you've got to say, can't you?"

burst out Hetty, impatiently. But Mrs. Little was not to be hurried.

Between her uneasiness at being face to face with Hetty, and her false sense of embarra.s.sment in speaking of the subject she had come to speak of, it took her a long time to make Hetty understand that poor Sally, finding that she was to be a mother again, had been afraid to tell Hetty herself, and had taken this method of letting her know the fact.

Hetty listened breathlessly, her blue eyes opening wide, and her cheeks growing red. She did not speak. Mrs. Little misinterpreted her silence.

"If you didn't want the baby here, I'd take it," she said almost beseechingly, "if Sally'd let me: it would break Jim's heart if they should have to leave here."

"Not want the baby!" shouted Hetty, in a voice which reached Sally in the garden, and made her look up, thinking she was called. "I should think you must be crazy, Mrs. Little;" and, with the involuntary words, there entered for the first time into her mind a wonder whether Mrs.

Little's whole treatment of her son and his wife were not so monstrous as to warrant a doubt as to her sanity. "Not want the baby! Why I'd give half the farm to have a baby running about here. How could Sally help knowing I'd be glad?" and Hetty moved swiftly towards the door, to go and seek Sally. Recollecting herself suddenly, she turned, and, halting on the threshold, said in her hardest tone:

"Is there any thing else you wish to say?" There was ignominious dismissal in her tone, her look, her att.i.tude; and Mrs. Little said hastily:

"Oh, no, nothing, nothing! I only want to tell you that I'd like to thank you, though, for all your kindness to Jim;" and Mrs. Little's lips quivered, and the tears came into her eyes. Hetty was unmoved by them.

"I think more of Sally than I do of Jim," she said severely. "It's all owing to Sally that he's got a chance to hold up his head again. Good morning, Mrs. Little;" and Hetty walked out of one door, leaving her guest to make her own way out of the other.

Sally found it hard to believe in Hetty's readiness to welcome her baby.

"Oh! you don't know, Hetty, how it will set everybody to talking again,"

said the poor girl. "You are so different from other folks. You can't understand. I don't suppose my children ever would be allowed to play with other children, do you?" she asked mournfully. "That was one thing which comforted me when my baby died. I thought she wouldn't live to have anybody despise her because she had had me for a mother. Somehow it don't seem fair, does it, Hetty, to have people punished for what their parents do? But the minister over at the Corners, that used to come and see me, he said that was what it meant in the Bible, where it said: 'Unto the third and fourth generation.' But I can't think it's so bad as that. You don't believe, Hetty, do you, that if I should have several children, and they should be married, that their grandchildren would ever hear any thing about me, how wicked I had been: do you, Hetty?"

"No, indeed, child!" said Hetty sharply, feeling as if she should cry.

"Of course I don't believe any such thing; and, if I did, I wouldn't worry over it. Why, I don't even know my great-grandmother's name," she laughed, "much less whether she were good or bad."

"Oh, but the bad things last so!" said Sally. "n.o.body says any thing about the good things: it's always the bad ones. I don't see why people like to: if they didn't, there'd be some chance of a thing's being forgotten."

"Never you mind, Sally," said Hetty, in a tone unusually caressing for her. "Never you mind, n.o.body talks about you now, except to say the good things; and you are always going to stay with me as long as I live, and when that baby comes we'll just wonder how we ever got along without him."

"Oh, Hetty, you're just one of the Lord's angels!" cried Sally.

"Humph!" said Hetty. "I hope he's got better ones. There wasn't much angel about me this morning when that mother-in-law of yours was here, I can tell you. I wonder if she'll have the heart to keep away after the baby's born."

"I thought of that, too," said Sally, timidly. "If it should be a boy, I think maybe she'd be pleased. She always did worship Jim. That's the reason she hates me so," sighed Sally.

It was the last of March before the longed-for baby came. Never did baby have a better welcome. It was as if three mothers had awaited his coming. Hetty's happiness was far greater than Sally's, and Nan's was hardly less. Hetty had been astonished at herself for the pa.s.sionate yearning she had felt towards the little unborn creature from the beginning, and, when she took the little fellow in her arms, her first thought was, "Dear me! if mothers feel any more than I feel now, how can they bear it?" Turning to Jim, she exclaimed, "Oh, Jim! I'm sure you ought to be happy now. We'll name this little chap after you, James Little, Junior."

"No!" said Jim, doggedly, "I'll not hand down that name. The sooner it is forgotten the better." All the sunshine and peace of his new home had not been enough wholly to brighten or heal Jim's wounded spirit. Hetty had found herself baffled at every turn by a sort of inertia of sadness, harder to deal with than any other form of mental depression.

"You're very wrong, Jim," replied Hetty, earnestly. "The name is your own to make or to mar, and you ought to be proud to hand it down."

"You can't judge about that, Hetty," said Jim. "It stands to reason that you can't have any idea about the feeling of being disgraced. I don't believe a man can ever shake it off in this world: if he can in any other, I have my doubts. I don't know what the orthodox people ever wanted to get up their theory of a h.e.l.l for. A man can be a worse h.e.l.l to himself, than any h.e.l.l they can invent to put him into. I know that."

"Jim!" exclaimed Hetty, "how dare you speak so, with this dear little innocent baby's eyes looking up at you?"

"That's just the reason," answered Jim, bitterly. "If this baby hadn't come, there seemed to be some chance of our outgrowing the memory of the things we'd like to forget and have forgotten. But this just rakes it all up again as bad as ever. You'll see: you don't know people so well as Sally and I do."

Before many weeks had pa.s.sed, Hetty was forced to admit that Jim was partly in the right. Neighbor after neighbor, under the guise of a friendly interest in the baby, took occasion to go over all the details of the first baby's life and death; and there was, in their manner to Sally, a certain new and pitying condescension which filled Hetty with wrath.

"What a mercy 'tis, 'tis a boy," said one visitor sanctimoniously to Hetty, as they left Sally's room together. Hetty turned upon her like lightning.

"I'd like to know what you mean by that," she said sharply. The woman hesitated, and at last said:

"Why you know, of course, such things are not so much consequence to men."

"Such things as what?" said Hetty, bluntly. "I don't understand you."

When at last her visitor put her meaning into unmistakable words, Hetty wheeled (they were walking down the long pine-shaded avenue together); stood still; and folding her arms on her bosom said:

"There! that was what I wanted. I thought if you were driven to putting it into plain English, perhaps you'd see how abominable it was to think it."

"No, no, you needn't try to smooth it down," she continued, interrupting her guest's efforts to mollify her by a few deprecating words. "You can't unsay it, now it's said; and saying it's no worse than thinking it. I don't envy you your thoughts, though. I've always stood up for Sally, and I always shall, and anybody that is stupid enough to suppose, because I stand up for her, I justify what she did that was wrong, is welcome: I don't care. Sally is a good, patient, loving woman to-day; I don't know anybody more so: I, for one, respect her. I wish I could be half as patient;" and Hetty stooped, and, picking up a handful of the pine-needles with which the road was thickly strewn, crumbled them up fiercely in her hands, and tossing the dust high in the air, exclaimed:

"I wouldn't give that for the character of any woman that can't believe in another woman's having thoroughly repented of having done wrong."

"Oh! n.o.body doubts that Sally has repented," said the embarra.s.sed visitor.