Cousin Delight is," Leslie Goldthwaite said to
herself, comparing it with other Sundays that had gone. Yet she too, for
weeks before, by the truth that had come into her own life and gone out
from it, had been helping to make these moments possible. She had been
shone upon, and had put forth; henceforth she should scarcely know when
the fruit was ripening or sowing itself anew, or the good and gladness
of it were at human lips.

She was in Mrs. Linceford's room on Monday morning, putting high
velvet-covered corks to the heels of her slippers, when Sin Saxon came
over hurriedly, and tapped at the door.

"_Could_ you be _two_ old women?" she asked, the instant Leslie opened.
"Ginevra Thoresby has given out. She says it's her cold,--that she
doesn't feel equal to it; but the amount of it is she got her chill with
the Shannons going away so suddenly, and the Amy Robsart and Queen
Elizabeth picture being dropped. There was nothing else to put her in,
and so she won't be Barbara."

"Won't be Barbara Frietchie!" cried Leslie, with an astonishment as if
it had been angelhood refused.

"No. Barbara Frietchie is only an old woman in a cap and kerchief, and
she just puts her head out of a window: the _flag_ is the whole of it,
Ginevra Thoresby says."

"_May_ I do it? Do you think I can be different enough in the two? Will
there be time?" Leslie questioned eagerly.

"We'll change the programme, and put 'Taking the Oath' between. The caps
can be different, and you can powder your hair for one, and--_would_ it
do to ask Miss Craydocke for a front for the other?" Sin Saxon had grown
delicate in her feeling for the dear old friend whose hair had once been
golden.

"I'll tell her about it, and ask her to help me contrive. She'll be sure
to think of anything that can be thought of."

"Only there's the dance afterward, and you had so much more costume for
the other," Sin Saxon said demurringly.

"Never mind. I shall _be_ Barbara; and Barbara wouldn't dance, I
suppose."

"Mother Hubbard would, marvelously."

"Never mind," Leslie answered again, laying down the little slipper,
finished.

"She don't care _what_ she is, so that she helps along," Sin Saxon said
of her, rejoining the others in the hall. "I'm ashamed of myself and all
the rest of you, beside her. Now make yourselves as fine as you please."

We must pass over the hours as only stories and dreams do, and put
ourselves, at ten of the clock that night, behind the gr