fonder of as the months go by. The inherited attachment of generations
seems to have been centred in her faithful heart.

It must be confessed that the summer which followed the close of her
school-life was, for the most part, very unsatisfactory. Her
school-days had been more than usually pleasant and rewarding, in
spite of the sorrows and disappointments and unsolvable puzzles which
are sure to trouble thoughtful girls of her age. But she had grown so
used at last to living by rules and bells that she could not help
feeling somewhat adrift without them. It had been so hard to put
herself under restraint and discipline after her free life in
Oldfields that it was equally hard for a while to find herself at
liberty; though, this being her natural state, she welcomed it
heartily at first, and was very thankful to be at home. It did not
take long to discover that she had no longer the same desire for her
childish occupations and amusements; they were only incidental now and
pertained to certain moods, and could not again be made the chief
purposes of her life. She hardly knew what to do with herself, and
sometimes wondered what would become of her, and why she was alive at
all, as she longed for some sufficient motive of existence to catch
her up into its whirlwind. She was filled with energy and a great
desire for usefulness, but it was not with her, as with many of her
friends, that the natural instinct toward marriage, and the building
and keeping of a sweet home-life, ruled all other plans and
possibilities. Her best wishes and hopes led her away from all this,
and however tenderly she sympathized in other people's happiness, and
recognized its inevitableness, for herself she avoided unconsciously
all approach or danger of it. She was trying to climb by the help of
some other train of experiences to whatever satisfaction and success
were possible for her in this world. If she had been older and of a
different nature, she might have been told that to climb up any other
way toward a shelter from the fear of worthlessness, and mistake, and
reproach, would be to prove herself in most people's eyes a thief and
a robber. But in these days she was not fit to reason much about her
fate; she could only wait for the problems to make themselves
understood, and for the whole influence of her character and of the
preparatory years to shape and signify themselves into a simple chart
and unmistakable command. And until the power wa