It was a bracing day, the current of wind coming in between the Maryland Heights fresh and vigorous, driving rifts of gray cloud across the transparent blue overhead. A healthy, growing day, the farmers called it; one did fancy, too, that the late crops, sowed after the last skirmish about the town, did thrust out their green blades more hopefully to-day than before; the Indian corn fattened and yellowed under its tresses of soft sun-burnt silk. Grey, going with Pen that afternoon through a great field of it, caught the clean, damp perfume of its husk; it put her in mind of long ago, somehow, when she was no older than Pen. So she stopped to gather the scarlet poppies along the fence, to make "court-ladies" out of them for him, as she used to do for herself in those old times. "Make me some shawls for them," said Pen, presenting her some lilac-leaves, which she proceeded to ornament by biting patterns with her teeth. "Oth said, if I eat poppy-seeds, I'd sleep, an' never waken again. Is that true, Sis?" "I believe it is. I don't know." Death and eternal sleeps were dim, far-off matters to Grey always,--very trivial to-day. She was a healthy, strong-nerved woman, loving God and her kin with every breath of her body, not likely to trouble herself about death, or ever to take her life as a mean, stingy makeshift and cheat, a mere rotten bridge to carry her over to something better, as more spiritually-minded women do. It was altogether good and great; every minute she wanted a firmer hold on it, to wring more work and pleasure out of it. She was so glad to live. God was in this world. Sure. She knew that, every moment she prayed. In the other? Yes; but then that was shadowy, and there were no shadows nor affinity for them in Grey. This was a certainty,--here. And to-day----So content to be alive to-day, that a something dumb in her brown eyes made Pen, looking up, laugh out loud. "Kiss me, Sis. You're a mighty good old Sis to-day. Let's go down to the river."