The village, as a whole, consoled itself on more tangible grounds. It has been stated that Miss Julia Parmalee arrived at the family homestead in early January. Before April had brought the buds and birds, this young woman had become President of the St. Mark’s Episcopal Ladies’ Aid Society; had organized a local branch of the Sanitary Commission, and assumed active control of all its executive and clerical functions; had committed the principal people of the community to holding a grand festival and fair in May for the Field Hospital and Nurse Fund; had exhibited in the chief store window on Main Street a crayon portrait of her late father, and four water-color drawings of European scenery, all her own handiwork; had published over her signature, in the Thessaly _Banner of Liberty_, an original and spirited poem on “Pale Columbia, Shriek to Arms!” which no one could read without patriotic thrills; and had been reported, on more or less warrant of appearances, to be engaged to four different young men of the place. Truly a remarkable young woman! We were only able in a dim kind of way to identify her with one of the group of girls in white dresses whom the village had stared at and studied from a distance two years before. There was no mystery about it, however: she was the youngest of them. They had all looked so much alike, with their precocious growth, their olive skins and foreign features, that we were quite surprised to find now that this one, regarded by herself, must be a great deal younger than the others. Perhaps it was only our rustic shyness which had imputed to the sisterhood, in that earlier experience, the hauteur and icy reserve of the rich and exclusive. We recognized now that if the others were at all like Julia, we had made an absurd mistake. It was impossible that any one could be freer from arrogance or pretence than Octavius found her to be. There were some, indeed, who deemed her emancipation almost too complete.