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eir easy greeting of her. "Why, what do you mean?" And just then the clock struck seven, deliberately. "Why--why, I thought--then you did not forget--" she began, uncertainly. "There is nothing like the open air for sleeping, when one is ready for it," said Hester. "Did you not notice the cover I threw over you? You must have gone off before it grew dark, quite." "Oh, no, because I was with--" then she stopped abruptly. For it dawned on her that the other woman must have been a dream, since she perceived that she was unwilling to ask about her, so faintly did that conversation recall itself to her, so uncertain her memory proved as to how that other came and went, or when. "It was a dream, of course," she thought, and said, a shade resentful still, "I never slept--that way--before." "It seems to suit you," said Ann briskly, "for you have never left your room till now." Then it dawned on her suddenly. "Why, I am well!" she said. "Very nearly, I think," Hester answered her. "Will you have your breakfast under the tree, while sister picks the berries?" To this she agreed gladly and found herself, still wondering at the new strength that filled her, under a pear-tree, in a pleasant patch of shadow, eating with relish from Hester's morning tray. Ann knelt not far from her in the sun, not too hot at this hour for a hardy worker, and soon her low humming rose like a bee's note from under her broad hat. "The wash is all ready for you, sister, on the landing," she called. "Tell mother her new towels bleached to a marvel: they are on the currant-bushes now. I'll wet them down and iron them off while the syrup is cooking, I think--I know she's anxious to handle them." "Are you always busy, Miss Ann?" her guest inquired, for Ann's fingers never stopped even while she looked toward the house-door. "Always in the morning, of course," she answered, directly. "Every one must be, if things are to get done." "But in the afternoon you are ironing, and Miss Hester tells me you do a great deal in the garden. When do you rest?" "In my bed," said Ann briefly. She was less sweetly grave than her sister, and it was easy to see that her tongue was sharper. She would not have been so soothing to an invalid, but the woman under the pear-tree had her nerves better in hand by now, and felt, somehow, upon her mettle to prove to this broad, curt Ann that there were tasks in the world beyond her sturdy r
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