ugh her mother's room to
the hall, and into the library, to find a book which she wanted.

On the table, at the side which had come of late to be considered
hers, lay an express parcel directed to herself. She knew the
writing,--the capital "S" made with a quick, upward, slanting line,
and finished with a swell and curl upon itself like a portly figure
"5" with the top-pennant left off; the round sweep after final
letters,--the "t's" crossed backward from their roots, and the
stroke stopped short like a little rocket just in poise of bursting.
She knew it all by heart, though she had never received but one
scrap of it before,--the card that had been tied to the ivy-plant,
with Rodney Sherrett's name and compliments.

She had heard nothing now of Rodney for two months. She was glad to
be alone to wonder at this, to open it with fingers that trembled,
to see what he could possibly have put into it for her.

Within the brown wrapper was a square white box. Up in the corner
of its cover was a line of writing in the same hand; the letters
very small, and a delicate dash drawn under them. How neatly special
it looked!

"A message from the woods for 'Sylvia.'"

She lifted it off, as if she were lifting it from over a thought
that it concealed, a something within all, that waited for her to
see, to know.

Inside,--well, the thought was lovely!

It was a mid-winter wreath; a wreath of things that wait in the
heart of the woodland for the spring; over which the snows slowly
gather, keeping them like a secret which must not yet be told, but
which peeps green and fresh and full of life at every melting, in
soft sunny weather, such as comes by spells beforehand; that must
have been gathered by somebody who knew the hidden places and had
marked them long ago.

It was made of clusters, here and there, of the glossy daphne-like
wintergreen, and most delicate, tiny, feathery plumes of
princess-pine; of stout, brave, constant little shield-ferns and
spires of slender, fine-notched spleenwort, such as thrust
themselves up from rough rock-crevices and tell what life is, that
though the great stones are rolled against the doors of its
sepulchre, yet finds its way from the heart of things, somehow, to
the light. Mitchella vines, with thread-like, wandering stems, and
here and there a gleaming scarlet berry among small, round,
close-lying waxy leaves; breaths of silvery moss, like a frosty
vapor; these flung a grace of lightness o