She took up her little tasks; she seemed quite as formerly, only, possibly, somewhat older and more staid.
The Squire thought that her recovery was due to a certain bitter medicine which Doctor Prescott had given her, and often extolled it to his wife.

"It is singular that medicine should work like a flash of lightning after she had been taking it for weeks with no effect," thought Abigail, but she said nothing.
One afternoon, not long after her talk with Colonel Lamson, Lucina met Jerome face to face in the road, and stopped and held out her hand to him.

"How do you do ?" she said, paling and blushing, and yet with a sweet confidence which was new in her manner.
Jerome bowed low, but did not offer his hand.

She held out hers persistently.
"I can't shake hands," he said, "mine is stained with leather; it smells of it, too." "I am not afraid of leather," Lucina returned, gently.
"I am," Jerome said, with a defiance in which there was no bitterness.

Then, as Lucina still looked at him and held out her hand, with an indescribable air of pretty, childish insistence and womanly pleading, her blue eyes being sober almost to tears, he motioned her to wait a moment, and swung over the fence and down the road-side, which was just there precipitous, to the brook-bed.