here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess
you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them
fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames."

Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread
edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned
together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea.

The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the
front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around
with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the
street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green,
swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or
forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less
impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a
wheel, or get a horse shod.

"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out
involuntarily.

Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes.

"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got
turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never
seemed the same again."

If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been
reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the
house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a
good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk
vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as
delicately as she did.

Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's
was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming,
pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most
elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed,
quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell
off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth,
neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot
was different: she was dark too, not _so_ dark; her eyes were full,
brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and
comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was
large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of,
like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her
mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to
perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate
about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness,