same tints in hair and cheek, but the straight,
placid lines of the elder broke into waves and dimples in the younger.
Nancy Helen shook hands in a limp, half-grown way, blushingly conscious
that her sleeves were rolled up, and that her elders were maturely
indifferent to her sufferings; and Lloyd jokingly refused to tell her
his name, insisting that she had kissed him good-by and promised to be
his little sweetheart when he came back.

Marg'et Ann was knitting a great blue and white sock for Laban, and
after she had turned the mammoth heel she smoothed it out on her lap,
painstakingly, conscious all the time of a tumultuous, unreasonable joy
in Lloyd's presence, in the sound of his voice, in his glance, which
assured her so unmistakably that she had a right to rejoice in his
coming.

She did not see her lover alone for several days. When she did, he
caught her hands and said, "Well, Marg'et Ann?" taking up the unsettled
question of their lives where they had left it. And Marg'et Ann stood
still, with her hands in his, looking down at the snow of the fallen
locust-bloom at her feet, and said,--

"When father is well enough to begin preaching again, then I
think--perhaps--Lloyd"--

But Lloyd did not wait to hear what she thought, nor trouble himself
greatly about the "perhaps."

* * * * *

The minister's injuries were slow to mend. They were all coming to
understand that his lameness would be permanent, and there was on the
part of the older children a tense, pained curiosity concerning their
father's feeling on the subject, which no word of his had thus far
served to relieve. There was a grave shyness among them concerning their
deepest feelings, which was, perhaps, a sense of the inadequacy of
expression rather than the austerity it seemed. Marg'et Ann would have
liked to show her sympathy for her father, and no doubt it would have
lightened the burdens of both; but any betrayal of filial tenderness
beyond the dutiful care she gave him would have startled the minister,
and embarrassed them both. Life was a serious thing to them only by
reason of its relation to eternity; a constant underrating of this world
had made them doubtful of its dignity. Marg'et Ann felt it rather
light-minded that she should have a lump in her throat whenever she
thought of her father on crutches for the rest of his life. She wondered
how Laban felt about it, but it was not likely that she would ever know.