Meetin' Seed and Sabbath Day Posies 351 



The twain had no children, and perhaps therefrom 

 grew and increased in Hetty a fairly passionate love 

 of exact order and neatness in her home a trait 

 which is not so common in New England house- 

 wives as many fancy, and which does not always 

 find equal growth and encouragement in New Eng- 

 land husbands. William chafed under the frequent 

 and bitter reproofs for the muddy shoes, dusty gar- 

 ments, hanging straws and seeds which he brought 

 into his wife's orderly paradise, and the jarring cul- 

 minated one night over such a trifle, a green sprig 

 of Lad's-love which he had dropped and trodden into 

 the freshly washed floor of the kitchen, where it left 

 a green stain on the spotless boards. 



The quarrel flamed high, and was followed by an 

 ominous calm which was not broken at breakfast. 

 It would be impossible to express in words Hetty's 

 emotions when she crossed her threshold to set her 

 shining milk tins in the morning sunlight, and saw 

 on one side of the doorstone a yawning hole where 

 had grown for ten years William's bunch of Lad's- 

 love. He had driven to the next village to sell 

 some grain, so she could search unseen for the van- 

 ished emblem of domestic felicity, and soon she 

 found it, in the ditch by the public road, already 

 withered in the hot sun. 



When her husband went at nightfall to feed and 

 water his cattle, he found the other bush of Lad's- 

 love, which had been planted with such affectionate 

 sentiment, trodden in the mire of the pigpen, under 

 the feet of the swine. 



They lived together for thirty years after this 



