were in the air, and everything indoors was clean,
and fresh with the wonderful freshness of things set every one in a
new place? We worked hard and we made it look lovely, if the things
were old; and every now and then we stopped in the midst of a busy
rush, at door or window, to see joyfully and exclaim with ecstasy how
grandly and exquisitely Nature was furbishing up her beautiful old
things also,--a million for one sweet touches outside, for ours in.

"Westover is no longer an adverbial phrase, even qualifying the verb
'to go,'" said Barbara, exultingly, looking abroad upon the family
settlement, to which our new barn, rising up, added another building.
"It is an undoubted substantive proper, and takes a preposition before
it, except when it is in the nominative case."

Because of the cellar-kitchen, there was a high piazza built up to the
sitting-room windows on the west, which gradually came to the
ground-level along the front. Under this was the woodshed. The piazza
was open, unroofed: only at the front door was a wide covered portico,
from which steps went down to the gravelled entrance. A light low
railing ran around the whole.

Here we had those blessed country hours of day-done, when it was right
and lawful to be openly idle in this world, and to look over through
the beautiful evening glooms to neighbor worlds, that showed always a
round of busy light, and yet seemed somehow to keep holiday-time with
us, and to be only out at play in the spacious ether.

We used to think of the sunset all the day through, wondering what new
glory it would spread for us, and gathering eagerly to see, as for the
witnessing of a pageant.

The moon was young, for our first delight; and the evening planet hung
close by; they dropped down through the gold together, till they
touched the very rim of the farthest possible horizon; when they slid
silently beneath, we caught our suspended breath.

[Illustration]

"But the curtain isn't down," said Barbara, after a hush.

No. The great scene was all open, still. Wide from north to south
stretched the deep, sweet heaven, full of the tenderest tints and
softliest creeping shadows; the tree-fringes stood up against it; the
gentle winds swept through, as if creatures winged, invisible, went
by; touched, one by one, with glory, the stars burned on the blue; we
watched as if any new, unheard-of wonder might appear; we looked out
into great depths that narrow daylight shut us in from