ohn, on his part, thinks Philo
consumptive.


_Thirty-five._ No great variation.

Both the farmer and the grocery-man are moderately prosperous; though
neither ventures much into speculation, because each is mindful of
possibilities in the future that will give great additional advantages.
The insurance table has been reduced to one of the exact sciences.

Molly, poor girl, has faded a shade or two. She still keeps house, and
raises an annual crop of old-maid pinks and pathetic-looking <DW29>s,
together with sage and rosemary and sweet marjoram, which she dries
and puts in her closets and drawers, in order that their delicate,
homelike fragrance may keep out the moths and pervade her apparel.
But, as she moves so briskly and cheerfully about her little tasks, or
bends over some bit of sewing or other ladycraft, grave doubts intrude
themselves; and, if she were one whit less patient and self-forgetful,
she would sometimes throw aside all these little occupations, and,
like Jephthah's daughter, bewail her virginity. And, as she sits on
Sunday mornings in church, alone in the pew except the 'squire,--now
an old man who takes incredible quantities of snuff and drops the
hymn-book,--as she sits thus, and watches the happy matrons, no older
than she, coming in one by one, with their manly husbands and groups
of rosy children, there comes up, sometimes, a great rising in her
throat, which she is fain to subdue by taking bits of her own preserved
flag-root, which she carries always in her pocket. Or, when she sees
some pretty bride arrayed in the customary fineries, she sighs a
little, as the thought that she has lost her best bloom comes uneasily
to the surface; and then she sometimes looks timidly around to see if
Mr. Avery has come to church. But Mr. Avery isn't often there; the
insurance table takes up a good deal of his attention on Sundays.

Molly has long ceased to dream about the white dresses and
orange-blossoms. She would be glad, indeed, to make sure of a plain
dark silk and only two kinds of cake; and of late