in it a field of the cloth
of gold, where simple love of life and childlike pleasure met and
sparkled for no eye to see. It was a croquet ground, laid out in the
days when croquet first inundated the land, and laid out by a woman.
This was Della Smith, the mother of two grave children, and the wife of
a farmer who never learned to smile. Eben was duller than the ox which
ploughs all day long for his handful of hay at night and his heavy
slumber; but Della, though she carried her end of the yoke with a
gallant spirit, had dreams and desires forever bursting from brown
shells, only to live a moment in the air, and then, like bubbles, die.
She had a perpetual appetite for joy. When the circus came to town, she
walked miles to see the procession; and, in a dream of satisfied
delight, dropped potatoes all the afternoon, to make up. Once, a
hand-organ and monkey strayed that way, and it was she alone who
followed them; for the children were little, and all the saner
house-mothers contented themselves with leaning over the gates till the
wandering train had passed. But Della drained her draught of joy to the
dregs, and then tilted her cup anew. With croquet came her supremest
joy,--one that leavened her days till God took her, somewhere, we hope,
where there is playtime. Della had no money to buy a croquet set, but
she had something far better, an alert and undiscouraged mind. On one
dizzy afternoon, at a Fourth of July picnic, when wickets had been set
up near the wood, she had played with the minister, and beaten him. The
game opened before her an endless vista of delight. She saw herself
perpetually knocking red-striped balls through an eternity of wickets;
and she knew that here was the one pastime of which no soul could tire.
Afterwards, driving home with her husband and two children, still in a
daze of satisfied delight, she murmured absently:--

"Wonder how much they cost?"

"What?" asked Eben, and Della turned, flushed scarlet, and replied:--

"Oh, nothin'!"

That night, she lay awake for one rapt hour, and then she slept the
sleep of conquerors. In the morning, after Eben had gone safely off to
work, and the children were still asleep, she began singing, in a
monotonous, high voice, and took her way out of doors. She always sang
at moments when she purposed leaping the bounds of domestic custom. Even
Eben had learned that, dull as he was. If he heard that guilty crooning
from the buttery, he knew she might be bre