out of her chamber Sunday morning all ready for meeting. Her mother
was sitting in the parlor beside a window, with her Bible on her
knees. The window was opened wide, and the room was full of the
reverberations of the meeting bell. Always on a pleasant Sunday
morning in summer-time Ann Edwards sat with her Bible at the open
window and listened to the meeting bell.

As Elmira entered, the bell tolled again, and the long wavering and
dying of its sweet multiple tones commenced afresh. Elmira stood
before her mother, and turned slowly about that she might view her on
all sides in her new attire.

Elmira whirled slowly, in a whispering, shimmering circle of pale
green silk; a little wrought-lace cape, which also had been part of
her mother's bridal array, covered her bare neck, for the dress was
cut low. She had bought a new ribbon of green and white, like the
striped grass of the gardens, for her bonnet, and tied it in a crisp
and dainty bow under her chin. This same bonnet, of a fine Florence
braid, had served her for best for nearly ten years. She had worn a
bright ribbon on it in the winter season and a delicate-hued one in
summer-time, but it was always the same bonnet.

Elmira had not had a new summer ribbon for three years, and now, in
addition, she had purchased some rosebuds, and arranged them in
little clusters in a frilling of lace inside the brim. Her pretty
face looked out of this little millinery halo with an indescribably
mild and innocent radiance. One caught one's self looking past her
fixed shining eyes for the brightness which they saw and reflected.

"Well," said her mother, "I guess you look as well as some other
folks, if you didn't lay out quite so much money. I guess folks will
have to give in you do."

Ann Edwards's little nervous face wore rather an expression of
antagonistic triumph than a smile of motherly approval; so hostile
had been all her conditions of life that she never laid down her
weapons, and went with spear in rest, as it were, even into her few
by-paths of delight.

She pulled Elmira's skirts here and there to be sure they hung
evenly; she bade her stand close, and picked out the ribbon bow under
her chin. "Now you'd better run along," said she, "or the bell will
stop tollin'."

She watched the girl, in her own old bridal array, step down the
front path, with more happiness than she had known since her
husband's disappearance. Elmira had told her mother that Lawrence
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