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 
