"Why," said Sabrina, in a voice so full and sweet that for the moment it seemed not to be her own hesitating note, "I've had more happiness than most folks have in their whole life. I've had all there is."
THE CHALLENGE
Mariana Blake, on her way home from Jake Preble's in the autumn twilight, heard women's voices sounding clearly at a distance, increasing in volume as they neared. She knew the turn of the road would hide her from them for a minute or two to come, and depending on that security she stepped over the wall and crouched behind the undergrowth at the foot of a wild cherry. They were only her neighbors, Sophronia Jackson and Lizzie Ann West, with whom she was on the kindliest terms; but for some reason she felt sensitive to the social eye whenever she was carrying Jake a basket of her excellent cookery or returning with the empty dishes. Other neighbors, it was true, contributed delicacies to his rudimentary housekeeping, though chiefly at festal times like Thanksgiving and Christmas; but Mariana was conscious that she had kept an especial charge over him since his sister died and left him alone. Yet this she was never willing to confess, and though she treasured what she had elected as her responsibility, it was with an exceptional shyness.
The voices came nearer at a steady pace, accompanied at length by the steady tread of Sophronia's low-heeled shoes and the pattering of Lizzie Ann on the harder side of the road. When they were nearly opposite the old cherry-tree, Sophronia spoke.
"Mercy! I stepped into a hole."
"Can't you remember that hole?" Lizzie Ann inquired, with her inconsequent titter. "I've had that in mind ever since I went to school. I always thought if I was one of the board o' selectmen, I guess I could manage to fill up that hole."
"I guess I shall have to set down here and shake the gravel out o' my shoe," said Sophronia. "You have this nice flat place, and I'll set where I can get my foot up easy."
There was the softest accompanying rustle, and they had both sat down. Mariana, over the wall, gripped her basket with a tenser hand, as if the dishes, of their own accord, might clink. She held her breath, too, smiling because she knew the need of caution would be brief. The instant they were settled, she told herself, they would talk down any such trifling sound as an unconsidered breath. She could foretell exactly what they would say, once they had exhausted the topic of gravel in the shoe. It would be either the new church cushions, or mock mince-pies for the sociable, or the minister's daughter's old canary that had ceased to sing or to echo the chirping of others, and yet was regarded with a devotion the parishioners could not indorse. Mariana had seen both her friends that day, and each of them had been more keenly alive to these topics than any.
"I don't see what makes you so sure," said Sophronia, in a jerky fashion, accompanying the attempt to draw her foot into the position indicated for unlacing.