This was quite as clear to John Bassett as it was to any of his neighbors and it was with a great sense of assured satisfaction and calm contentment that he took his second wife home and installed her in his house. He felt for her a great esteem and an honest liking, and the sort of calm affectionate regard, which was all he had to offer her in the way of love, was all that Mrs. Susan Thatcher would have known what to do with. More would have embarrassed and annoyed her for she was, as we have said, the incarnation of common sense.
When in the course of her setting to rights all things in the house, she came upon the locked drawer in John's bureau, she said to herself:—
"Here 's some of Molly Wilder's things, I expect. I guess I 'd better let 'em alone. If he wants me to have 'em, he 'll say so when he gets ready;" and she asked no question about the drawer.
The little work-basket, with all its contents, now so yellowed and dusty with age,—for it was eight years since Molly died,—John had burned the night before he married Susan.
"I don't believe little Molly would like to have Susan have that," he thought, "and I don't think I want her to neither," he added, with a deep sigh and a yearning recollection of Molly's sweet face, as he watched the crisp straw crackle and the fine fiery lines of the threads quiver and turn from red
