lost years
before: "If Lucy had lived, she'd 'a' been seventeen this spring,--just
your age; and you remind me of her sometimes. She always had such red
cheeks, and was never sick a day till she was taken down with the
diphtheria."

For a while the affairs of the present were forgotten, as the old and
never-wholly-healed wound was opened afresh and she dwelt upon her
bereavement; but soon the round of work must be taken up, the dishes
must be washed, the victuals set away, and supper for the threshers must
be planned and prepared. It was best so. "Time, the healer, and work,
the consoler," enable us to bear many things which in the first keen
freshness of grief seem unbearable.

The threshers thought they would be done by six o'clock, so they decided
not to stop for supper at five, as was the custom, but wait for their
evening meal till the work of the day was completed. Elvira started home
before this time, and good Mrs. Loper not only filled her own little
basket, but made her take a larger one packed with remains of the feast.

There were three weeks more of her school, and during that time she saw
young Farmer Worth several times. Twice she met him in the road, and
once he stopped at the school-house to bring her Wilson's book on birds,
which he had promised to lend her. But the day before school closed he
came and helped Jack Sapp and some other boys make a platform in the
woods, on which the children could speak their declamations and sing
their songs, and on the afternoon of the last day of school was present
in the crowd of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends assembled on
that important and, to the children, most exciting occasion. There were
declamations from the third and fourth readers,--"How big was Alexander,
Pa?" and "He never smiled again," and "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"--and
Maggie Loper held the audience spell-bound by an entirely new one, which
Elvira had selected and copied for her out of a book of poems,--"The
Dream of Eugene Aram." Then there were songs, and dialogues, and two
compositions, one on "Rats" and one on "Planting Corn," which had been
produced by their respective authors after much wear of brain fibre and
much blotting of writing-paper. Last of all, Elvira read one of
Longfellow's poems, after which she said that the exercises of the
school were over, but that remarks from visitors would be gladly
received. Then one of the trustees arose, and said that education was a
great blessin