"Isn’t it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."

"No doubt you’ve heard the office call me Mabel. I have to let them call me what they like."

They were both stirred that he should have divined Without the name her personal mystery. It made it seem as if there must be something She must have missed herself. So they were married, And took the fancy home with them to live by.

They went on pilgrimage once to her father’s (The house one story high in front, three stories On the side it presented to the road) To see if there was not some special tree She might have overlooked. They could find none, Not so much as a single tree for shade, Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard. She told him of the bookmark maple leaf In the big Bible, and all she remembered Of the place marked with it--"Wave offering, Something about wave offering, it said."

"You’ve never asked your father outright, have you?"

"I have, and been put off sometime, I think." (This was her faded memory of the way Once long ago her father had put himself off.)

"Because no telling but it may have been Something between your father and your mother Not meant for us at all." "Not meant for me? Where would the fairness be in giving me A name to carry for life, and never know The secret of?" "And then it may have been Something a father couldn’t tell a daughter As well as could a mother. And again It may have been their one lapse into fancy 'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for By bringing it up to him when he was too old. Your father feels us round him with our questing, And holds us off unnecessarily, As if he didn’t know what little thing Might lead us on to a discovery. It was as personal as he could be About the way he saw it was with you To say your mother, had she lived, would be As far again as from being born to bearing."

"Just one look more with what you say in mind, And I give up"; which last look came to nothing. But, though they now gave up the search forever, They clung to what one had seen in the other By inspiration. It proved there was something. They kept their thoughts away from when the maples Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam Of sap and snow rolled off the sugar house. When they made her related to the maples, It was the tree the autumn fire ran through And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke. They always took their holidays in autumn. Once they came on a maple in a glade, Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up, And every leaf of foliage she’d worn Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet. But its age kept them from considering this one. Twenty-five years ago at Maple’s naming It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling The next cow might have licked up out at pasture. Could it have been another maple like it? They hovered for a moment near discovery, Figurative enough to see the symbol, But lacking faith in anything to mean The same at different times to different people. Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them From thinking it could be a thing so bridal. And anyway it came too late for Maple. She used her hands to cover up her eyes. "We would not see the secret if we could now: We are not looking for it any more."

Thus had a name with meaning, given in death, Made a girl’s marriage, and ruled in her life. No matter that the meaning was not clear. A name with meaning could bring up a child, Taking the child out of the parents' hands. Better a meaningless name, I should say, As leaving more to nature and happy chance. Name children some names and see what you do.

THE AXE-HELVE

I’ve known ere now an interfering branch Of alder catch my lifted axe behind me. But that was in the woods, to hold my hand From striking at another alder’s roots, And that was, as I say, an alder branch. This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day Behind me on the snow in my own yard Where I was working at the chopping-block, And cutting nothing not cut down already. He caught my axe expertly on the rise, When all my strength put forth was in his favor, Held it a moment where it was, to calm me, Then took it from me—​and I let him take it. I didn’t know him well enough to know What it was all about. There might be something He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor He might prefer to say to him disarmed. But all he had to tell me in French-English Was what he thought of—​not me, but my axe; Me only as I took my axe to heart. It was the bad axe-helve some one had sold me-- "Made on machine," he said, ploughing the grain With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran Across the handle’s long drawn serpentine, Like the two strokes across a dollar sign. "You give her one good crack, she’s snap raght off. Den where’s your hax-ead flying t’rough de hair?" Admitted; and yet, what was that to him?

"Come on my house and I put you one in What’s las' awhile—​good hick’ry what’s grow crooked, De second growt' I cut myself—​tough, tough!"

Something to sell? That wasn’t how it sounded.

"Den when you say you come? It’s cost you nothing. To-naght?"

As well to-night as any night.

Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove My welcome differed from no other welcome. Baptiste knew best why I was where I was. So long as he would leave enough unsaid, I shouldn’t mind his being overjoyed (If overjoyed he was) at having got me Where I must judge if what he knew about an axe That not everybody else knew was to count For nothing in the measure of a neighbor. Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees, A Frenchman couldn’t get his human rating!

Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair That had as many motions as the world: One back and forward, in and out of shadow, That got her nowhere; one more gradual, Sideways, that would have run her on the stove In time, had she not realized her danger And caught herself up bodily, chair and all, And set herself back where she started from. "She ain’t spick too much Henglish—​dat’s too bad."

I was afraid, in brightening first on me, Then on Baptiste, as if she understood What passed between us, she was only feigning. Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more Than for himself, so placed he couldn’t hope To keep his bargain of the morning with me In time to keep me from suspecting him Of really never having meant to keep it.

Needlessly soon he had his axe-helves out, A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me To have the best he had, or had to spare-- Not for me to ask which, when what he took Had beauties he had to point me out at length To insure their not being wasted on me. He liked to have it slender as a whipstock, Free from the least knot, equal to the strain Of bending like a sword across the knee. He showed me that the lines of a good helve Were native to the grain before the knife Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves Put on it from without. And there its strength lay For the hard work. He chafed its long white body From end to end with his rough hand shut round it. He tried it at the eye-hole in the axe-head. "Hahn, hahn," he mused, "don’t need much taking down." Baptiste knew how to make a short job long For love of it, and yet not waste time either.

Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge? Baptiste on his defence about the children He kept from school, or did his best to keep-- Whatever school and children and our doubts Of laid-on education had to do With the curves of his axe-helves and his having Used these unscrupulously to bring me To see for once the inside of his house. Was I desired in friendship, partly as some one To leave it to, whether the right to hold Such doubts of education should depend Upon the education of those who held them?

But now he brushed the shavings from his knee And stood the axe there on its horse’s hoof, Erect, but not without its waves, as when The snake stood up for evil in the Garden,-- Top-heavy with a heaviness his short, Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down And in a little—​a French touch in that. Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased; "See how she’s cock her head!"

THE GRINDSTONE

Having a wheel and four legs of its own Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone To get it anywhere that I can see. These hands have helped it go, and even race; Not all the motion, though, they ever lent, Not all the miles it may have thought it went, Have got it one step from the starting place. It stands beside the same old apple tree. The shadow of the apple tree is thin Upon it now, its feet are fast in snow. All other farm machinery’s gone in, And some of it on no more legs and wheel Than the grindstone can boast to stand or go. (I’m thinking chiefly of the wheelbarrow.) For months it hasn’t known the taste of steel, Washed down with rusty water in a tin. But standing outdoors hungry, in the cold, Except in towns at night, is not a sin. And, anyway, its standing in the yard Under a ruinous live apple tree Has nothing any more to do with me, Except that I remember how of old One summer day, all day I drove it hard, And someone mounted on it rode it hard, And he and I between us ground a blade.

I gave it the preliminary spin, And poured on water (tears it might have been); And when it almost gayly jumped and flowed, A Father-Time-like man got on and rode, Armed with a scythe and spectacles that glowed. He turned on will-power to increase the load And slow me down—​and I abruptly slowed, Like coming to a sudden railroad station. I changed from hand to hand in desperation. I wondered what machine of ages gone This represented an improvement on. For all I knew it may have sharpened spears And arrowheads itself. Much use for years Had gradually worn it an oblate Spheroid that kicked and struggled in its gait, Appearing to return me hate for hate; (But I forgive it now as easily As any other boyhood enemy Whose pride has failed to get him anywhere). I wondered who it was the man thought ground-- The one who held the wheel back or the one Who gave his life to keep it going round? I wondered if he really thought it fair For him to have the say when we were done. Such were the bitter thoughts to which I turned.

Not for myself was I so much concerned. Oh no!--although, of course, I could have found A better way to pass the afternoon Than grinding discord out of a grindstone, And beating insects at their gritty tune. Nor was I for the man so much concerned. Once when the grindstone almost jumped its bearing It looked as if he might be badly thrown And wounded on his blade. So far from caring, I laughed inside, and only cranked the faster, (It ran as if it wasn’t greased but glued); I’d welcome any moderate disaster That might be calculated to postpone What evidently nothing could conclude. The thing that made me more and more afraid Was that we’d ground it sharp and hadn’t known, And now were only wasting precious blade. And when he raised it dripping once and tried The creepy edge of it with wary touch, And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed, Only disinterestedly to decide It needed a turn more, I could have cried Wasn’t there danger of a turn too much? Mightn’t we make it worse instead of better? I was for leaving something to the whetter. What if it wasn’t all it should be? I’d Be satisfied if he’d be satisfied.