cheek
against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of
cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields
a bird was calling. Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her
as if the blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future.
She was ill, poor, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her
future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of
it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable
certainty of it. It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden
field of heaven.

She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her
black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted.
Mrs. Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety
when she saw her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually
misplace the air.

Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.

"Don't shut the window, mother," said Lois.

"I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child."

"No, I sha'n't, either. I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother."

Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.

"Goin' to meetin', mother?" Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.

"I thought mebbe I would."

"I guess I won't go. I want to sew some on my dress this evenin'."

"Sha'n't you mind stayin' alone, if I go?"

"Mind stayin' alone? of course I sha'n't. You get the strangest ideas
lately, mother."

Mrs. Field put on her black bonnet and shawl, and started. The bell
tolled, and she passed down the village street with a stiff
steadiness of gait. She felt eager to go to meeting to-night. This
old New England woman, all of whose traditions were purely orthodox,
was all unknowingly a fetich-worshipper in a time of trouble. Ever
since her daughter had been ill, she had had a terrified impulse in
her meeting-going. It seemed to her that if she stayed away, Lois
might be worse. Unconsciously her church attendance became a species
of spell, or propitiation to a terrifying deity, and the wild
instinct of the African awoke in the New England woman.

When she reached the church the bell had stopped ringing, and the
vestry windows were parallelograms of yellow light; the meeting was
in the vestry.

Mrs. Field entered, and took a seat well toward the front. The room
was half filled with people, and the mass of them were elderly and
middle-aged women. There were rows of their homely, faded, and
strong-lined f