Miss Mattie’s revery idled over the year upon year of respectable stupidity that represented life in Fairfield, while her eyes and soul were in the boiling gold of the sky-glory.  She sighed.

A panorama of life minced before Miss Mattie’s mind about as vivid and full of red corpuscles as a Greek frieze.  Her affectionate nature was starved.  They visited each other, the ladies of Fairfield—­these women who had rolled on the floor together as babies—­in their best black, or green or whatever it might be, and gloves!  This, though the summer sun might be hammering down with all his might.  And then they sat in a closed room and talked in a reserved fashion which was entirely the property of the call.  Of course, one could have a moment’s real talk by chance meeting, and there were the natural griefs of life to break the corsets of this etiquette, although in general, the griefs seemed to be long drawn out and conventional affairs, as if nature herself at last yielded to the system, conquered by the invincible conventionality and stubbornness of the ladies of Fairfield.  It was the unspoken but firm belief of each of these women, that a person of their circle who had no more idea of respectability than to drop dead on the public road would never go to Heaven.

Poor Miss Mattie!  Small wonder she dropped her hands, sat back and wondered, with another sigh, if it were for this she was born?  She did not rebel—­there was no violence in her—­but she regretted exceedingly.  In spite of her slenderness, it was a wide, mother-lap in which her hands rested, an obvious cradle for little children.  And instinctively it would come to you as you looked at her, that there could be no more comfortable place for a tired man to come home to, than a household presided over by this slow-moving, gentle woman.  There was nothing old-maidish about Miss Mattie but the tale of her years.  She had had offers, such as Fairfield and vicinity could boast, and declined them with tact, and the utmost gratitude to the suitor for the compliment; but her “no” though mild was firm, for there lay within her a certain quiet valiant spirit, which would rather endure the fatigue and loneliness of old age in her little house, than to take a larger life from any but the man who was all.  A commonplace in fiction; in real life sometimes quite a strain.

The sun distorted himself into a Rugby football, and hurried down as though to be through with Fairfield as soon as possible.  It was a most magnificent sun-set; flaming, gorgeous, wild—­beyond the management of the women of Fairfield—­and Miss Mattie stared into the heart of it with a longing for something to happen.  Then the thought came, “What could happen?” she sighed again, and, with eyes blinded by Heaven-shine, glanced down the village street.