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"I've missed you, Kit," said William finally. "I had to come back."

Kit said nothing.

"You don't seem very pleased to see me."

How could a girl say that there had been a time when she had longed with all her heart to see him? Besides, there was something more on William's mind.

"I don't want you to think that I hold anything against you, Kit," he said awkwardly. "Everyone knows that you meant well. They are all saying in the town what a help you have been to your aunt these past weeks. You'll find, when you come back, I promise you, Kit, that everyone is willing to let bygones be bygones, and that you can make a fresh start."

Kit looked down at the tip of William's great boot. "What do you mean by a fresh start?" she asked quietly.

"I mean that it is well over. The Widow Tupper is gone, and it won't be necessary to see much of the Cruff child. Don't you agree, Kit, that from now on it would be wise to use a little more judgment about people?

"Mind you, I'm not speaking against charity," he went on, seeing her mouth opening to protest. "We're supposed to care for the poor. But you overdo it, Kit."

"But it wasn't charity!" Kit burst out. "Hannah and Prudence—they are my friends!"

"That's just what I mean. We're judged by the company we keep. And in our position people look to us for an example of what is right and proper."

"And I'm to set an example by turning my back on my friends?" Kit's eyes glittered.

"Oh, Kit," pleaded William miserably. "I didn't want to quarrel with you tonight. But try to see it from my side. It would make a man uneasy never knowing what his wife would do next."

"'Twould make a wife uneasy never knowing whether she could depend on her husband," Kit answered levelly. William had the grace to flush, but he held stubbornly to his position.

A month ago Kit's temper would have flared. But all at once she realized that William could not really anger her. She had had a long time to think, that night on the riverbank, and the longer night in the constable's shed. She had never consciously made any decision, but suddenly there it was waiting and unmistakable.

"'Tis no use, William," she said now. "You and I would always be uneasy, all of our lives. We would always be hoping for the other one to be different, and always being disappointed when it didn't happen. No matter how hard I tried, I know I could never care about the things that seem so important to you."

"The house isn't important to you?" he asked slowly.

"Yes, in a way it is," she admitted. "I'd like to live in a fine house. But not if it means I have to be an example. Not if it means I can't choose my own friends."

William too had been doing some thinking. He did not seem surprised, only gravely regretful.

"Perhaps you're right, Kit," he conceded. "I've hoped all this year that you would forget your odd ways and learn to fit in here. If I thought you would just try—"

She shook her head.

"Then I won't be coming again?"

"'Tis no use, William," she repeated.

At the door he turned and looked back, his face baffled and unhappy. There was in his eyes just the merest flicker of the look she had seen there on that first morning outside the Meeting House. In that instant Kit knew that she had only to speak one word or to stretch out her hand. But she did not speak, and presently William opened the door and was gone.

Now the long evenings about the hearth were seldom relieved by any visitor. For hours on end the whir of the spinning wheel and the twang of the loom were the only sounds. Except for a formal bow of greeting on Sabbath morning and on Lecture Day, Kit did not see William again till the day of Thankful Peabody's wedding.

Thankful's wedding was the first festivity Wethersfield had enjoyed since the sickness. Through drifts of snow waist-high, by sleigh and sled and snowshoe, young people and old folks and children gathered in the spacious Peabody house, relieved to shake off the labor and anxiety of the past weeks and to rejoice with the happy couple. The feast spread out on the board would be talked