was locked.

For a week she went about her work like a sleepwalker. Her future was
settled. Life was over. Why make ado? The suns would set and the moons
would rise: let them; there would always be suns to set and moons to
rise. There were dinners to get and stockings to mend; there would
always be dinners to get and stockings to mend. She was put into the
world for the sake of dinners and stockings, apparently. Very well; she
was growing used to it; one could grow used to it. She put away the
barbe and the pink muslin, locked her ribbon-box into the lower drawer,
gave up crimping her hair, and wore the chocolate calico all day. She
went to the Thursday-evening conference, discussed the revival with
Deacon Snow, and locked herself into her room one night to put the lamp
on the bureau before the glass and shake her soft hair down about her
colorless, inexpectant face, to see if it were not turning gray. She was
disappointed to find it as brown and bright as ever.

But Sharley was very young, and the sweet, persistent hopes of youth
were strong in her. They woke up presently with a sting like the sting
of a frost-bite.

"O, to think of being an old maid, in a little black silk apron, and
having Halcombe Dike's wedding-cards laid upon a shelf!"

She was holding the baby when this "came all over her," and she let him
drop into the coal-hod, and sat down to cry.

What had she done that life should shut down before her in such cruel
bareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began to
fight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored the
crimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and a
sewing-circle, as well as a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lasted
for another week. At the end of that time she went and sat down alone
one noon on a pile of kindlings in the wood-house, and thought it over.

"Why, I can't!" her eyes widening with slow terror. "Happiness _won't_
come. I _can't_ make it. I can't ever make it. And O, I'm just at the
beginning of everything!"

Somebody called her just then to peel the potatoes for dinner. She
thought--she thought often in those days--of that fancy of hers about
calico-living. Was not that all that was left for her? Little dreary,
figures, all just alike, like the chocolate morning-dress? O, the
rose-bud and shimmer that might have been waiting somewhere! And O, the
rose-bud and shimmer that were forever gone!

The frosted golds of au