so blue!"

"You say things that puzzle me," Mr. Brand declared.

"I always know when I do it," proceeded Gertrude. "But people puzzle me
more, I think. And they don't seem to know!"

"This is very interesting," Mr. Brand observed, smiling.

"You told me to tell you about my--my struggles," the young girl went
on.

"Let us talk about them. I have so many things to say."

Gertrude turned away a moment; and then, turning back, "You had better
go to church," she said.

"You know," the young man urged, "that I have always one thing to say."

Gertrude looked at him a moment. "Please don't say it now!"

"We are all alone," he continued, taking off his hat; "all alone in this
beautiful Sunday stillness."

Gertrude looked around her, at the breaking buds, the shining
distance, the blue sky to which she had referred as a pretext for her
irregularities. "That 's the reason," she said, "why I don't want you to
speak. Do me a favor; go to church."

"May I speak when I come back?" asked Mr. Brand.

"If you are still disposed," she answered.

"I don't know whether you are wicked," he said, "but you are certainly
puzzling."

She had turned away; she raised her hands to her ears. He looked at her
a moment, and then he slowly walked to church.

She wandered for a while about the garden, vaguely and without purpose.
The church-bell had stopped ringing; the stillness was complete. This
young lady relished highly, on occasions, the sense of being alone--the
absence of the whole family and the emptiness of the house. To-day,
apparently, the servants had also gone to church; there was never a
figure at the open windows; behind the house there was no stout negress
in a red turban, lowering the bucket into the great shingle-hooded
well. And the front door of the big, unguarded home stood open, with
the trustfulness of the golden age; or what is more to the purpose, with
that of New England's silvery prime. Gertrude slowly passed through it,
and went from one of the empty rooms to the other--large, clear-colored
rooms, with white wainscots, ornamented with thin-legged mahogany
furniture, and, on the walls, with old-fashioned engravings, chiefly of
scriptural subjects, hung very high. This agreeable sense of solitude,
of having the house to herself, of which I have spoken, always excited
Gertrude's imagination; she could not have told you why, and neither can
her humble historian. It always seemed to her that she must do somethi