Jerome stopped them, and repeated the charge he had
given to the little girls, then kept on. The bell was ringing for
afternoon meeting--in fact, it was almost done. Jerome walked faster,
for he intended to go. He drew near the little white-steepled
meeting-house standing in its small curve of greensward, with the row
of white posts at the side, to which were tied the farmers' great
plough-horses harnessed to covered wagons and dusty chaises, and then
he caught a glimpse of something bright, like a moving flower-bush,
in the road ahead. Squire Eben Merritt, his wife, his sister Miss
Camilla, and his daughter Lucina, were all on their way to afternoon
meeting.

The Squire was with them that day, leaving heroically his trout-pools
and his fishing-fields; for was it not his pretty Lucina's second
Sunday only at home, and was he not as eager to be with her as any
lover? Squire Eben had gained perhaps twenty pounds of flesh to his
great frame and a slight overcast of gray to his golden beard;
otherwise he had not changed in Jerome's eyes since he was a boy. The
Squire's wife Abigail, like many a small, dark woman who has never
shown in her looks the true heyday of youth, had apparently not aged
nor altered at all. Little and keenly pleasant, like some
insignificant but brightly flavored fruit, set about with crisp silk
flounced to her trim waist, holding her elbows elegantly aslant under
her embroidered silk shawl, her small head gracefully alert in her
bright-ribboned bonnet, she stepped beside her great husband, and
then came Lucina with Miss Camilla.

Miss Camilla glided along drooping slenderly in black lace and lilac
silk, with a great wrought-lace veil flowing like a bride's over her
head, and shading with a black tracery of leaves and flowers her fair
faded face; but Jerome saw her no more than he would have seen a
shadow beside Lucina.

If Lucina's parents had changed little, she had changed much, with
the wonderful change of a human spring, and this time Jerome saw her
as well as her gown. She wore that same silken gown of a pale-blue
color, spangled with roses, and the skirts were so wide and trained
over a hoop and starched petticoats that they swung and tilted like a
great double flower, and hit on this side and that with a quick
musical slur. Over Lucina's shoulders, far below her waist, fell her
wonderful fair hair, in curls, and every curl might well have proved
a twining finger of love. Lucina wore a bon