o soft braids from a little head bent
humbly. As she stepped down into the water I shivered with the cold
of it, and I remembered sharply how much I had loved her. She went
down until the water was well above her waist, and stood white and
small, with her hands crossed on her breast, while the minister said
the words about being buried with Christ in baptism. Then, lying in
his arm, she disappeared under the dark water. "It will be like that
when she dies," I thought, and a quick pain caught my heart. The
choir began to sing "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb" as she rose
again, the door behind the baptistry opened, revealing those three
dear guardians, Mrs. Dow, Mrs. Freeze, and Mrs. Spinny, and she went
up into their arms.

I went to see Nell next day, up in the little room of many memories.
Such a sad, sad visit! She seemed changed--a little embarrassed and
quietly despairing. We talked of many of the old Riverbend girls and
boys, but she did not mention Guy Franklin or Scott Spinny, except
to say that her father had got work in Scott's hardware store. She
begged me, putting her hands on my shoulders with something of her
old impulsiveness, to come and stay a few days with her. But I was
afraid--afraid of what she might tell me and of what I might say.
When I sat in that room with all her trinkets, the foolish harvest
of her girlhood, lying about, and the white curtains and the little
white rug, I thought of Scott Spinny with positive terror and could
feel his hard grip on my hand again. I made the best excuse I could
about having to hurry on to Denver; but she gave me one quick look,
and her eyes ceased to plead. I saw that she understood me
perfectly. We had known each other so well. Just once, when I got up
to go and had trouble with my veil, she laughed her old merry laugh
and told me there were some things I would never learn, for all my
schooling.

The next day, when Mrs. Dow drove me down to the station to catch
the morning train for Denver, I saw Nelly hurrying to school with
several books under her arm. She had been working up her lessons at
home, I thought. She was never quick at her books, dear Nell.

* * * * *

It was ten years before I again visited Riverbend. I had been in
Rome for a long time, and had fallen into bitter homesickness. One
morning, sitting among the dahlias and asters that bloom so bravely
upon those gigantic heaps of earth-red ruins that were once the