It had been just
before Thanksgiving, and she went to church with an aching and ungrateful
heart. The parson read from the eighth chapter of St. Matthew, a most
unexpected selection for that holiday. "If you can't find anything else to be
thankful for," he cried, "go home and be thankful you are not a leper!"
Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it was many
a year before she could manage to add to this slender store anything to
increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the time she was
outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.
Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop in her
cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick (where, so the
neighbors told him, she was a great favorite in society, and was receiving
much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never heard of his visit until
the spring had come again. Parted friends did not keep up with one another's
affairs by means of epistolary communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it
was not the custom. Spoken words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and
written words were quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to
define his half-conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount
his disappointments and discouragements and mistakes.
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