With a demure resistance to the will of its makers the village had made itself decorative.

The people were unconscious of any attractiveness in themselves or in their village.
There were, however, a few who felt the beauty stirring around them.
These few, for their knowledge and for the pleasure which it brought, paid the accustomed price.

The records of their lives were the only notable history of the place since the days when their forefathers suffered for the faith.
One of these was a girl--for she was still but a child when she died; and she had lived in the Red Mansion with the tall porch, the wide garden behind, and the wall of apricots and peaches and clustering grapes.

Her story was not to cease when she was laid away in the stiff graveyard behind the Meeting-house.

It was to go on in the life of her son, whom to bring into the world she had suffered undeserved, and loved with a passion more in keeping with the beauty of the vale in which she lived than with the piety found on the high-backed seats in the Quaker Meeting-house.