The parson read from the eighth chapter of St.Matthew, a most unexpected selection for that holiday.

"If you can't find anything else to be thankful for," he cried, "go home and be thankful you are not a leper!" Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it was many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store anything to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the time she was outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.
Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop in her cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick (where, so the neighbours told him, she was a great favourite in society, and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never heard of his visit until the spring had come again.

Parted friends did not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom.

Spoken words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his half- conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount his disappointments and discouragements and mistakes..