"Dear Miss Craydocke!" cried the girl; "if I thought it would seem like
that, I would send and tip them all into the river. But you,--you
_can't_ be eclipsed! Your orbit runs too high above ours."

Sin Saxon's brightness and independence, that lapsed so easily
into sauciness, and made it so hard for her to observe the mere
conventionalisms of respect, in no way hindered the real reverence that
grew in her toward the superiority she recognized, and that now softened
her tone to a tenderness of humility before her friend.

There was a grace upon her in these days that all saw. Over her real wit
and native vivacity, it was like a porcelain shade about a flame. One
could look at it, and be glad of it, without winking. The brightness was
all there, but there was a difference in the giving forth. What had been
a bit self-centred and self-conscious--bright as if only for being
bright and for dazzling--was outgoing and self-forgetful, and so
softened. Leslie Goldthwaite read by it a new answer to some of her old
questions. "What harm is there in it?" she had asked herself on their
first meeting, when Sin Saxon's overflow of merry mischief, that yet did
"no special or obvious good," made her so taking, so the centre of
whatever group into which she came. Afterward, when, running to its
height, this spirit showed in behavior that raised misgivings among the
scrupulous and orderly that would not let them any longer be wholly
amused; and came near betraying her, or actually did betray her, into
indecorums beyond excuse or countenance, Leslie had felt the harm, and
begun to shrink away. "Nothing _but_ leaves" came back to her; her
summer thought recurred and drew to itself a new illustration. This it
was to have no aim but to rustle and flaunt; to grow leaves continually;
to make one's _self_ central and conspicuous, and to fill great space.
But now among these very leaves gleamed something golden and glorious;
something was ripening suddenly out that had lain unseen in its
greenness; the time of figs seemed coming. Sin Saxon was intent upon new
purpose; something to be _done_ would not let her "stand upon the order"
or the fashion of her doing. She forgot her little airs, that had been
apt to detract from her very wit, and leave it only smartness; bright
things came to her, and she uttered and acted them; but they seemed
involuntary and only on the way; she could not help herself, and nobody
would have had it helped; she was still