waited for her
to grow up; and Barb _was_ sharp; and our little Hazel is witchy and
sweet and wild-woodsy; and Luclarion,--isn't that shiny and
trumpety, and doesn't she do it? And then--there's me. I shall
always be stiff and hard and unsatisfied, except in little bits of
summer times that won't come often. They might as well have
christened me Anxiety. I wonder why they didn't."

"That would have been very different. There is a nobleness in
Desire. You will overlive the restless part," said Miss Craydocke.

"Was there ever anything restless in your life, Miss Craydocke? And
how long did it take to overlive it? It doesn't seem as if you had
ever stubbed your foot against anything; and I'm _always_ stubbing."

"My dear, I have stubbed along through fifty-six years; and the
years had all three hundred and sixty-five days in them. There were
chances,--don't you think so?"

"It looks easy to be old after it is done," said Desire. "Easy and
comfortable. But to be eighteen, and to think of having to go on to
be fifty-six; I beg your pardon,--but I wish it was over!"

And she drew a deep breath, heavy with the days that were to be.

"You are not to take it all at once, you know," said Miss Craydocke.

"But I do, every now and then. I can't help it. I am sure it is the
name. If they had called me 'Hapsie,' like you, I should have gone
along jolly, as you do, and not minded. You see you have to _hear_
it all the time; and it tunes you up to its own key. You can't feel
like a Dolly, or a Daisy, when everybody says--De-sire!"

"I don't know how I came to be called 'Hapsie,'" said Miss
Craydocke. "Somebody who liked me took it up, and it seemed to get
fitted on. But that wasn't when I was young."

"What was it, then?" asked Desire, with a movement of interest.

"Keren-happuch," said Miss Craydocke, meekly. "My father named me,
and he always called me so,--the whole of it. He was a severe,
Old-Testament man, and _his_ name was Job."

Desire was more than half right, after all. There was a good deal of
Miss Craydocke's story hinted in those few words and those two
ancient names.

"But I turned into 'Miss Craydocke' pretty soon, and settled down. I
suppose it was very natural that I should," said the sweet old maid,
serenely.

XVII.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

The evening train came in through the little bend in the edge of the
woods, and across the bridge over the pretty rapids, and slid to its
stopping-pla