eir lashes were long enough to braid. Fine gold hair
flew about her temples, and her innocent chin sank chastely like a
nun's. She and her mother never had a minute for thinking about clothes,
and so they wore soft sad-colored stuffs rather like the earth; but
these quite satisfied Ellen, because they were warm or cool to suit the
weather, and beauty, she thought, grew only from the ground.

One spring twilight Mrs. Withington was putting out her geraniums, while
Ellen leaned over the gate and talked with Susan Long. The frogs were
peeping down by the mill, and a breath of dampness came from the
upturned soil. Susan Long was the only one of the old schoolgirls with
whom Ellen had kept any semblance of intimacy; the rest of them thought
her oddly unsuited to their grown-up pastimes. She was like a bud, all
close and green, while they flared their petals to the sun and begged
for cherishing.

"Just think," said Ellen in her reedy voice, never loud enough to be
heard at "teacher's desk" in school, "while we've been standing here
three couples have gone by. I never saw so much pairing off."

Susan laughed exuberantly. She was a big girl, with a mariner's walk and
hard red cheeks.

"Anybody but you'd seen 'em a good many times," she remarked. "If you
ain't the queerest! Why, they're fellers and girls!"

"Yes, I know it," said Ellen innocently. "One was John Davis and Maria
Orne, one was--"

"Oh, I don't mean that! I mean they're goin' together. Ain't you heard
what old uncle Zephaniah said down to the Ridge? He told father this
year'd be known as the time o' the flood, all creation walkin' two and
two. Why, everybody in Countisbury's gettin' married. Courtin' begun in
the fall, with singin'-school, and this is the upshot. What do you
s'pose I'm waitin' here for, 'sides talkin' with you? Just hold on a
minute and you'll see Milt Richardson pokin' along this way. Then
there'll be four couples instead o' three."

"O Sue!" said Ellen, in a little bruised tone. She felt disturbed, as if
the spring twilight had in some manner turned to a much-revealing day.
Sue leaned over the gate and whispered rapidly:

"I'll tell you somethin' else, only don't you let it go no further.
Mother says might as well not count your chickens till they're hatched,
and aunt Templeton was left at the meetin'-house door. He asked me seven
weeks ago come Wednesday, and I've got lots of my sewin' done. Some of
my trimmin' 's real pretty. You come o