Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/219

Rh self, and it gives rise to the question as to what really happened there that so unmannerly a deed should be unblushingly proclaimed.

As a matter of fact the incident did not occur as related by descendants of the family. There was cause for much offense, but the cause decidedly lay not with Mrs. Glover. She left the house of her own volition, left it with the same composure that she had first entered it. And her leaving was justifiable. A lady who was a guest of the house at the time accompanied her and together they went to the home of Miss Sarah Bagley. Here arrangements were made for Mrs. Glover's entertainment for the time being, as she expected shortly to return to Stoughton. Miss Bagley's home, while simple and modest, was nevertheless a home of refinement, a place admirably adapted for a quiet and studious life, and some months later Mrs. Glover returned and passed a winter with her. The house was an old homestead built by Squire Lowell Bagley. It stood for a century, just below the hill clothed with cedar and pine on which the poet Whittier lies buried after living for fifty years in the quiet old town. Across the way and a little further up the street was the home of Valentine Bagley, who had been a sea-captain. Once in his wanderings he had been a castaway in Arabia. Suffering tortures of thirst in the desert, he resolved, if he reached home, to dig a well by the wayside, that no passer-by should ever want for water. This well was dug and Whittier, hearing the story, wrote his poem on the “Captain's Well.” Indeed, the town was full of the legends of the past