“Her sin has found her out,” said Miss Beal.  “She’s fallen by the way.”

“You’d think,” said Mrs. Crabbe, “she’d behave herself a speck, after the life she’s had.”

Mrs. Grumble also was of the opinion that Mrs. Wicket had done wrong in allowing herself to care for Noel Ploughman.  For it seemed to the gossips that Mrs. Wicket’s life was, by rights, no longer her own to do with.  She was the earthly remains of a sinner; she had no right to enjoy herself.

Two days later Noel Ploughman enlisted, “for the duration of the war.”  His grandmother accepted the congratulations of Mrs. Crabbe and the sympathy of Mrs. Barly with equal satisfaction.  It seemed to her that she had done her duty as she saw it.  But when Noel was killed in France a year later, she felt that Mrs. Wicket had killed him.  “Now,” she croaked to Mrs. Crabbe, “I hope she’s satisfied.”

She seemed to be; she took the news of Noel’s death with curious calm.  It was almost as if she had been expecting it, looking for it . . . one might have thought she had been waiting for it. . . .  After a while, she began to sing again.  Her voice, as she crooned to Juliet, was musical, but quavery.  It provoked the good women of the village, who began to think that perhaps, after all, she had “had her way.”  “There’s this much about it,” said Miss Beal; “no one else will have him now.”

Mrs. Grumble agreed with her.  She disliked Mrs. Wicket because Mr. Jeminy liked her.  He pitied the young woman who had had the misfortune to marry a thief, and he forgave her for wanting to be happy, because it did not seem to him that to have been the wife of a good-for-nothing was much to settle down on.  In his opinion, life owed her more than she had got.

“She is simple and kind,” he said to Mrs. Grumble.  “She has had very little to give thanks for.”

“She’ll have more, then, if she can,” replied Mrs. Grumble with a toss of her head as though to say, “it’s you who are simple.”

And she looked the other way, when they met on the road.  Mr. Jeminy, on the other hand, often went to call at the little house at the edge of the village.  The young widow, who had no other callers, felt that one friend was enough when he talked as much as Mr. Jeminy.  While he laid open before her the great books of the past, illuminating their pages with his knowledge and reflections, she listened with an air of tranquil pleasure.  She counted the stitches on her sewing, and answered “sakes alive,” in the pauses.

One day in April she put on her best dress, and took the stage to Milford.  When she came home again, in the evening, she brought with her a decorated shell for her friend.  But it happened that Thomas Frye also came home from Milford, by the same stage.  That was what Mrs. Grumble was waiting for.  “Now she’s at it again,” said Mrs. Grumble.  “She’s bound to have some one,” she declared; “one or another, it’s all the same.”  And she gazed meaningly at Mr. Jeminy, who started at once for his den, as though he were looking for something.