"And is that red rag you hid away a cross, Maria-Ann Simmons?" No words can do justice to the old dame's tone and its implied impiety of her granddaughter's conduct.
Maria-Ann was silent.
"Be you a Christian girl, or an idolater, Maria-Ann?"
Her grandmother's voice shook pitiably. Maria-Ann's conscience gave a twinge, when she heard it; but she felt the time was ripe, and she must put in the sickle.
"I hope I 'm a Christian, grandmarm, but I 'm an idolater, too,--" Aunt Tryphosa drew in her breath, as if hurt. "But, anyway, I guess I was an American 'fore I was a Christian, an' I jest idolize my Country--" Maria-Ann's eyes filled with tears--"an' I can't do anything for her, nor make sacrifices same as other women do who can send their husbands--," a sob, "an' lovers--," another sob, "an' nuss 'em, an' help on their Country's cause livin' 'way up here in an old back paster with an old cow--an' an old wo--Oh, grandmarm!" Maria-Ann broke down utterly, laid her head upon her knees, and sobbed unrestrainedly.
It was an unusual sight, and Aunt Tryphosa was troubled. She felt it necessary to beat a retreat in the face of such genuine grief, but she was determined that it should be a dignified one.
"I ain't never seen you give way so, Maria-Ann, and you 're thirty-one year old come next January. I 've done my best to bring you up right, an' now you 're old enough to know your own mind, I hope; so, if you want to leave me, you can go jest as soon as you can get ready. I come up for Dorcas, an' now I 'm goin' home." In spite of her effort her old voice trembled, but her pride sustained her nobly, and Maria-Ann was all unaware that the tears were rolling down the wrinkled furrows in the old cheeks as her grandmother drove Dorcas before her down the fern-scented pasture slope.
Her granddaughter followed her half an hour later, and after a silent supper, except for Aunt Tryphosa's murmured "grace," and a faint "amen" from the other side of the table, Maria-Ann lighted a lamp and shut herself into her small bedroom.
She placed a chair against the door, lest she might be suddenly raided, and drew the other splint-bottomed one up to the head of the bed. Lifting the feather-bed she thrust her hand far under and drew out a square, white pasteboard box. It was tied with a narrow, white ribbon. She undid it carefully, and took out a layer of tissue paper. The lamp-light shone upon a large, gilt heart, some ten by eight inches, with a thickness of two inches.
Maria-Ann turned the box this way and that, watching the play of light on it, for the heart was skewered with a large, silver-gilt arrow, and the shaft, where it penetrated, held a small, white card with simulated blood-drops in carmine splashed on in one corner, and the sentiment, written in the same, straggling diagonally across the other corner: