too."

"I wouldn't say that, Dorothy!" said Rachel Barton. "We need the wool,
and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest either."

"Oh! mother, mother! What a mother thee is!" cried Dorothy laughing,
and rumpling her cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.

"She's a great deal too good for _thee_, Dorothy Barton."

"She's too good for all of us! How did thee ever come to have such a
graceless set of children, mother?"

"I'm very well satisfied," said Rachel. "But now do be quiet, and let's
finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!"

The wild clematis was in blossom now--the fences were white with it,
and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths, but the weeds
were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching
her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the
farm-lane, which had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest
green fields, where the daisies' faces were as white and clear as in
early June.

One hot August night she came home late from the store. The stars were
thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their
rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from
falling asleep in the shadow of the hills.

"Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?" her mother asked, as she took
her seat on the low step of the porch. "Would thee mind turning old
John out thyself?"

"No, mother, I'm not tired. But why--oh, _I_ know!" cried Dorothy, with
a quick laugh. "The dance--at Slocum's barn. I _thought_ those boys
were uncommonly helpful."

"Yes, dear, it's but natural they should want to see it. Hark! we can
hear the music from here."

They listened, and the breeze brought across the fields the sound of
fiddles and the rhythmic tramp of feet, softened by the distance.
Dorothy's young pulses leaped.

"Mother, is it any harm for them just to _see_ it? They have so little
fun except what they get out of teasing and shirking."

"My dear, thy father would never countenance such a scene of frivolity,
or permit one of his children to look upon it."

Through our eyes and ears the world takes possession of our hearts.

"Then I'm to spare the boys this temptation, mother? Thee will trust
_me_ to pass the barn?"

"I would trust my boys, if they were thy age Dorothy. But their
resolution is tender, like their years."

It might be questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went
to bed that night, u