er intention of having Ray Ingraham for
her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore
away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always
lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out
under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread
carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders;
the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of
quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always
glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little
purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in
her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury
library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not
so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds,
where all sorts of blooms,--bright petunias and verbenas, delicate
sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy
deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and
rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised
on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged
things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,--made a glory
and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the
grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery,
against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines.

"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in
her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one
evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother.
"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same
things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees
put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a
view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a
peep at the hills. But you are right down _amongst_ such niceness!
There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling
along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down
the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the
shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had
all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good
time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate
properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread
smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and becau