od, sharp-tongued
Sister Etta, who said such quick, bright things and ran her house so
wonderfully; Aunt Julia, dear, dear Aunt Julia, whose warm heart was one
of Lydia's happiest homes, and Aunt Julia's brother, Dr. Melton--ah, how
could anyone be grateful enough for such an all-comprehending,
quick-helping, ever-ready ally, teacher, mentor, playmate, friend and
comrade as her godfather!

As she lay in her soft white bed and looked about her pretty room with
an ineffable sense of well-being, it seemed to her that everything that
had happened to her was lovely and that the prospect of her future could
contain only a crescendo of good-fortune. It was not that she imagined
for herself a future remarkably different in detail from what was the
past of the people about her. Even now at what she felt was the
beginning of the first chapter, she knew the general events of the story
before her; but this morning she was penetrated with the keenest sense
of the unfathomable difference it made in those events in that they were
about to happen to her. She had been passively watching the excited
faces of people hurling themselves down-hill on toboggans, but now she
was herself poised on the crest of the slope, tense with an excitement
not only more real, but somehow more vital to the scheme of things, than
that felt by other people who had made the thrilling trip before her.

She lay still for a few moments, luxuriating in the innocent egotism of
this view of her future, which was none the less absorbing for being so
entirely unterrifying, and then sprang up, impatient to begin it. No one
else in the house was awake. She saw with surprise that it was barely
five o'clock. She wondered that she felt so little sleepy, since she had
been up late the night before. All the family and connections had
gathered, and she had talked with an eager breathlessness and had
listened as eagerly to pick up all those details of home news which do
not go into letters; those insignificant changes and events that make up
the physiognomy of an existence, without which one cannot again become
an integral part of a life once familiar. It had been a fatiguing,
illuminating evening.

A change of mood had come in the night. As she dressed she felt that, in
some way, neither the fatigue nor the illumination had lasted on through
the blankness of her sound young sleep. She felt restlessly fresh and
vigorous, like a creature born anew with the morning light, and