here all through that winter----"

"But you were dancing and acting plays!"

"Don't call up any more of my bad, mistaken deeds! Have I not convinced
you that I repented of them, and am doing my best to make amends?"

The fire in Vane's eyes awed Primrose, conquered her curiously, and a
treacherous softening of the lines about her sweet mouth almost made a
smile.

"And now what next?" commented Polly. "Do you know how we are loitering?
Has the place charmed us? I never thought it so fascinating before."

It was to charm many a one, later on, like a little oasis in the great
walls of brick that were to grow about it, of traffic and noise and
disputations that were never to enter here, and to have a romance,
whether rightly or wrongly, that was to call many a one thither at the
thought of Evangeline. And so a poet puts an imperishable sign on a
place, or a historian a golden seal.

"We were to go somewhere else. And see where the sun is dropping to. It
always slides so fast on that round part of the sky."

"Yes, the most beautiful little place, and to get our violets. Betty,
when they are all gone we will have long days hunting up queer corners
and things. And somewhere--out at Dunk's Ferry--there is a strange sort
of body who tells fortunes occasionally--when she is in _just_ the
humor. And that makes it the more exciting, because you can never quite
know. We will take Patty; we can find all the strange corners."

"Why couldn't we all go? To have one's fortune told--not that I believe
in it," and Vane laughed.

"Then you have no business to have it told. And Miss Jeffries runs over
the cards and tells ever so many things, and they _are_ really true. You
will meet her again some evening."

Gilbert Vane blushed. The fortune he wanted to hear was not one with
which he would like a whole roomful entertained.

"It is this way."

Primrose walked on ahead with Andrew Henry.

"There is a suspicious-looking cloud, bigger than a man's hand."

"Oh, then let us hurry! Nonsense, Phil, why do you alarm a body? See how
the sun shines. It is going past. Now--down at the end of this lane----"

Just then some great drops fell. Primrose ran like a sprite and turned a
triumphant face to the others when she was under shelter.

It was indeed a fairy nook with a strip of woods back of it. A little
thread of a stream ran by on one side. In summer, when the trees were in
full leaf, it would be a bower of greenery. A low, story-