was grown up, and went away to school, these
childish love-dreams seemed quite lost and forgotten, in her
awakening under the light of older life. In those latter days Lucina
had never thought about Jerome Edwards. She had even, perhaps, had
her heart touched, at least to a fancy of love, by the admiration of
others. It was whispered in the village that Lucina Merritt had had
chances already. However, if she had, she had waved them back upon
the donors before they had been fairly given, with that gentlest
compassion which would permit no need of itself. Lucina, however her
heart might have been swerved for a season to its natural inclination
of love, had never yet admitted a lover, for, when it came to that
last alternative of open or closed doors, she had immediately been
seized with an impulse of flight into her fastness of childhood and
maidenhood.

But now, though she scarcely loved Jerome as yet, the power of her
old dreams was over her again. No one can over-estimate the tendency
of the human soul towards old ways of happiness which it has not
fully explored.

Lucina had begun, almost whether she would or not, to dream again
those old sweet dreams, whose reality she had never yet tasted. Had
life ever broken in upon the dreams, had a word or a caress ever
become a fact, it is probable she would have looked now upon it all
as upon some childish fruit of delight, whose sweetness she had
proved and exhausted to insipidity. And this, with no disparagement
to her, for the most faithful heart is in youth subject to growth and
change, and not free as to the exercise of its own faithfulness.

Lucina that Sunday evening had put on one of her prettiest muslin
frocks, cross-barred with fine pink flowers set between the bars. She
tied a pink ribbon around her waist, too, and wore her morocco shoes.
She looked down at the crisp flow of muslin over her knees, and
thought if Jerome had known that she had put on that pretty dress, he
would have been sure she wanted him to come. Still, she would not
have liked him to know she had taken as much pains as that, but she
wished so she had invited him more cordially to come.

The tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on the fair triangle of
neck between the folds of her lace tucker; she was weeping for
Jerome's hurt, but it seemed strangely like her own. She was
half-minded to go into the house and tell her mother all about it,
repeat that miserable little dialogue between herse