The woods on the shores of Massabesic Pond were stretches of tapestry, where every shade of green and gold, olive and brown, orange and scarlet, melted the one into the other. The somber pines made a deep-toned background; patches of sumach gave their flaming crimson; the goldenrod grew rank and tall in glorious profusion, and the maples outside the Office Building were balls of brilliant carmine. The air was like crystal, and the landscape might have been bathed in liquid amber, it was so saturated with October yellow.  
Susanna caught her breath as she threw her chamber window wider open in the early morning; for the greater part of the picture had been painted during the frosty night.
 
“Throw your little cape round your shoulders and come quickly, Sue!” she exclaimed.
 
The child ran to her side. “Oh, what a goldy, goldy morning!” she cried.
 
One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem that acted as a sort of rudder, came down to the windowsill with a sidelong scooping flight, while two or three gayly painted ones, parted from the tree by the same breeze, floated airily along as if borne on unseen wings, finally alighting on Sue's head and shoulders like tropical birds.
 
“You cried in the night, Mardie!” said Sue. “I heard you snifferling and getting up for your hank'chief; but I did n't speak 'cause it's so dreadful to be catched crying.”
 
“Kneel down beside me and give me part of your cape,” her mother answered. “I'm going to let my sad heart fly right out of the window into those beautiful trees.”
 
“And maybe a glad heart will fly right in!” the child suggested.
 
“Maybe. Oh! we must cuddle close and be still; Elder Gray's going to sit down under the great maple; and do you see, all the Brothers seem to be up early this morning, just as we are?”
 
“More love, Elder Gray!” called Issachar, on his way to the toolhouse.
 
“More love, Brother Issachar!”
 
“More love, Brother Ansel!”
 
“More love, Brother Calvin!”
 
“More love!.... More love!.... More love!” So the quaint but not uncommon Shaker greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and as Tabitha and Martha and Rosetta met on their way to dairy and laundry and seed-house, they, too, hearing the salutation, took up the refrain, and Susanna and Sue heard again from the women's voices that beautiful morning wish, “More love! More love!” speeding from heart to heart and lip to lip.
 
Mother and child were very quiet.
 
“More love, Sue!” said Susanna, clasping her closely.
 
“More love, Mardie!” whispered the child, smiling and entering into the spirit of the salutation. “Let's turn our heads Farnham way! I'll take Jack and you take Fardie, and we'll say togedder, 'More love'; shall we?”
 
“More love, John.”
 
“More love, Jack.”
 
The words floated out over the trees in the woman's trembling voice and the child's treble.
 
“Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got up,” Sue continued.
 
“He is not strong,” replied her mother, remembering Brother Ansel's statement that the Elder “wa'n't diseased anywheres, but did n't have no durability.”
 
“The Elder would have a lovely lap,” Sue remarked presently.
 
“What?”
 
“A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap, too, and Uncle Joel Atterbury, but not Aunt Louisa; she lets you slide right off; it's a bony, hard lap. I love Elder Gray, and I climbed on his lap one day. He put me right down, but I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take right hold of his hand and walk all over the farm, but he would n't let me, I s'pose.— More love, Elder Gray!” she cried suddenly, bobbing up above the windowsill and shaking her fairy hand at him.
 
The Elder looked up at the sound of the glad voice. No human creature could have failed to smile back into the roguish face or have treated churlishly the sweet, confident little greeting. The heart of a real man must have an occasional throb of the father, and when Daniel Gray rose from his seat under the maple and called, “More love, child!” there was something strange and touching in his tone. He moved away from the tree to his morning labors with the consciousness of something new to conquer. Long, long ago he had risen victorious above many of the temptations that flesh is heir to. Women were his good friends, his comrades, his sisters; they no longer troubled the waters of his soul; but here was a child who stirred the depths; who awakened the potential father in him so suddenly and so strongly that he longed for the sweetness of a human tie that could bind him to her. But the current of the Elder's being was set towards sacrifice and holiness, and the common joys of human life he felt could never and must never be his; so he went to the daily round, the common task, only a little paler, a little soberer than was his wont.
 
“More love, Martha!” said Susanna when she met Martha a little later in the day.............