" For he
had no claim on her, though half his parishioners, and many outside
his parish, had long ago given her to him, and said that she was
worthy; while he had loved her, as only natures like his can love,
since that week before Christmas, when their hands had met with a
strange, tremulous flutter, as together they fastened the wreaths of
evergreen upon the wall, he holding them up and she driving the
refractory tacks, which would keep falling in spite of her, so that
his hand went often from the carpet or basin to hers, and once
accidentally closed almost entirely over the little, soft, white
thing, which felt so warm to his touch.
How prettily Anna had looked to him during those memorable days, so
much prettier than the other young girls of his flock, whose hair was
tumbled ere the day's work was done, and whose dresses were soiled and
disordered; while here was always so tidy and neat and the braids of
her chestnut hair were always so smooth and bright. How well, too, he
remembered that brief ten minutes, when, in the dusky twilight which
had crept so early into the church, he stood alone with her, and
talked, he did not know of what, only that he heard her voice replying
to him, and saw the changeful color on her cheek as she looked
modestly in his face.
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