"Yes, ma'am?"
"Did he come with a scarlet woman, did you hear?"
"Not so far as I know. No, he came all alone, early in the morning.
Wasn't anybody with him."
Beneath her blanket, Juliet hugged Anna to her breast. "There, you see," she whispered. And in her fresh, young voice, she began to sing, while the wagon rattled down the road to Milford, a song she had heard her mother singing the year Noel Ploughman died.
"Love is the first thing,
Love goes past.
Sorrow is the next thing,
Quiet is the last.
Love is a good thing,
Quiet isn't bad,
But sorrow is the best thing
I've ever had."
XI
AND IS FOUND IN GOOD HANDS
From the Bade farmhouse, a mile below Hemlock Mountain, the road winds down to Adams' Forge, past Aaron Bade's stony fields. To the north lies Milford; but to the south lies that enchanting land, blue in the distance, misty in the sun, which the heart delights to call its home.
It is the land we see from any hilltop. As we gaze at its far off rises, its hazy, shadowy valleys, we feel within us a longing and a faint melancholy. There, we think, dwell the friends who would love us, if we were known to them, and there, too, must be found the beauty and the happiness that we have failed to discover where we are. It seems to us that there, in the distance, we should be happier, we should be more amiable and more dignified.