Squire Eben at that time ransacked the woods for choice game, and himself stood over old Hannah or his wife, broiling the delicate birds that they be done to a turn, and was fit to weep when his pretty Lucina could scarcely taste them.  Often, too, he sent surreptitously to Boston for dainties not obtainable at home—­East India fruits and jellies and such—­to tempt his daughter’s appetite, and watched her with great frowns of anxious love when they were set before her.

One afternoon, when Lucina had gone up to her chamber to lie down, having left her dinner almost untasted, though there was a little fat wild bird and guava jelly served on a china plate, and an orange and figs to come after, the Squire beckoned his wife into the sitting-room and shut the door.

“D’ye think she’s going into a decline?” he whispered.  His great frame trembled all over when he asked the question, and his face was yellow-white.  Years ago a pretty young sister of his, whose namesake Lucina was, had died of a decline, as they had termed it, and, ever since, death of the young and fair had worn that guise to the fancy of the Squire.  He remembered just how his young sister had looked when she was fading to her early tomb, and to-day he had seemed to see her expression in his daughter’s face.

Abigail laid her little hand on his arm.  “Don’t look so, Eben,” she said.  “I don’t think she is in a decline; she doesn’t cough.”

“What ails her, Abigail?”

Mrs. Merritt hesitated.  “I don’t know that much ails her, Eben,” she said, evasively.  “Girls often get run down, then spring up again.”

“Abigail, you don’t think the child is fretting about—­that boy again?”

“She hasn’t mentioned his name to me for weeks, Eben,” replied Abigail, and her statement carried reassurance, since the Squire argued, with innocent masculine prejudice, that what came not to a woman’s tongue had no abiding in her mind.

His wife, if she were more subtle, gave no evidence of it.  “I think the best plan would be for her to go away again,” she added.

The Squire looked at her wistfully.  “Do you think it would, Abigail?”

“I think she would brighten right up, the way she did before.”

“She did brighten up, didn’t she?” said the Squire, with a sigh.  “Well, maybe you’re right, Abigail, but you’ve got to go with her this time.  The child isn’t going away, looking as she does now, without her mother.”

So it happened that, a week or two later, Jerome, going to his work, met the coach again, and this time had a glimpse of Abigail Merritt’s little, sharply alert face beside her daughter’s pale, flower-like droop of profile.  He had not been in the shop long before his uncle’s wife came with the news.  She stood in the doorway, quite filling it with her voluminosity of skirts and softly palpitating bulk, holding a little fluttering shawl together under her chin.