Some of them said, "Won't you pass the day
with us?" but Lucy Ann replied blithely:--
"Oh, John's invited me there!"
All that week, too, she answered letters, in her cramped and careful
hand; for cousins had bidden her to the feast. Over the letters she had
many a troubled pause, for one cousin lived near Ezra, and had to be
told that John had invited her; and to three others, dangerously within
hail of each, she made her excuse a turncoat, to fit the time.
Duplicity in black and white did hurt her a good deal, and she
sometimes stopped, in the midst of her slow transcription, to look up
piteously and say aloud:--
"I hope I shall be forgiven!" But by the time the stamp was on, and the
pencil ruling erased, her heart was light again. If she had sinned, she
was finding the path intoxicatingly pleasant.
Through all the days before the festival, no house exhaled a sweeter
savor than this little one on the green. Lucy Ann did her miniature
cooking with great seriousness and care. She seemed to be dwelling in a
sacred isolation, yet not altogether alone, but with her mother and all
their bygone years. Standing at her table, mixing and tasting, she
recalled stories her mother had told her, until, at moments, it seemed
as if she not only lived her own life, but some previous one, through
that being whose blood ran with hers.
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