would have dropped upon her deck. With one arm round an old trunk,
Anne often sat on the edge of these cliffs, looking down through the
western pass. She had never felt any desire to leave the island, save
that sometimes she had vague dreams of the tropics--visions of
palm-trees and white lilies, the Pyramids and minarets, as fantastic as
her dreams of Shakspeare. But she loved the island and the island trees;
she loved the wild larches, the tall spires of the spruces bossed with
lighter green, the gray pines, and the rings of the juniper. She had a
peculiar feeling about trees. When she was a little girl she used to
whisper to them how much she loved them, and even now she felt that they
noticed her. Several times since these recent beginnings of care she had
turned back and gone over part of the path a second time, because she
felt that she had not been as observant as usual of her old friends, and
that they would be grieved by the inattention. But this she never told.

There was, however, less and less time for walking in the woods; there
was much to do at home, and she was faithful in doing it: every spring
of the little household machinery felt her hand upon it, keeping it in
order. The clothes she made for Tita and the boys, the dinners she
provided from scanty materials, the locks and latches she improvised,
the paint she mixed and applied, the cheerfulness and spirit with which
she labored on day after day, were evidences of a great courage and
unselfishness; and if the garments were not always successful as regards
shape, nor the dinners always good, she was not disheartened, but bore
the fault-findings cheerfully, promising to do better another time. For
they all found fault with her, the boys loudly, Tita quietly, but with a
calm pertinacity that always gained its little point. Even Miss Lois
thought sometimes that Anne was careless, and told her so. For Miss Lois
never concealed her light under a bushel. The New England woman believed
that household labor held the first place among a woman's duties and
privileges; and if the housekeeper spent fourteen hours out of the
twenty-four in her task, she was but fulfilling her destiny as her
Creator had intended. Anne was careless in the matter of piece-bags,
having only two, whereas four, for linen and cotton, colors and black
materials, were, as every one knew, absolutely necessary. There was also
the systematic halving of sheets and resewing them at the first sign