ardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply
impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such
wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!"

"Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you
reproved her!"

"Reprove her?" My mother's voice was full of astonishment. "Why should
I reprove her? She was perfectly right!"

"Perfectly right? Why, you said--indeed, I assure you, you said that
Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!"

"Oh, _that!_ I see; well, as for that, she was."

"Then, surely--"

"My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes
the man apologize," said my mother firmly. "That is the Law, fixed as
the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is
ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia
remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her
madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?"

I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head
bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did
it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet--Laurence, and I,
too, love her all the more dearly for it! _Miserere, Domine!_

It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written
us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and
how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she
planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.

I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At noon there had been
a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and
full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds,
leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable
mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers. "The opulent
dyepots of the angels" had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and heavenly glow, every
window glittering diamond-bright to the west.

Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons,
which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her
with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay
along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with
his slanting emerald