She hated mystery; she hated reticence; she hated every thing which fell short of full and frank understanding of each other.
"Oh, Stephen!" she used to say often, "it is bad enough for us to be forced into keeping things back from the world.

Don't let us keep any thing back from each other." Poor Mercy! the days were beginning to be hard for her.

Her face often wore a look of perplexed thought which was very new to it.

Still she never wavered for a moment in her devotion to Stephen.

If she had stood acknowledged before all the world as his wife, she could not have been any more single-hearted and unquestioning in her loyalty.
It was at a picnic in which the young people of both Danby and Penfield had joined that Mercy met Parson Dorrance.