“Tell me of Silverton; you don’t know how I want to go there; but Wilford does not think it best, at present. Next fall I am surely going, and I picture to myself just how it will look: Morris’s garden, full of the autumnal flowers—the ripe peaches in our orchard, the grapes ripening on the wall, and the long shadows on the grass, just as I used to watch them, wondering what made them move so fast, and where they could be going. Will it be unchanged, Marian? Do places seem the same when once we have left them?” and Katy’s eager eyes looked wistfully at Marian, who replied, “Not always—not often, in fact; but in your case they may. You have not been long away.” “Only a year,” Katy said. “I was as long as that in Canandaigua; but this past year is different. I have seen so much, and lived so much, that I feel ten years older than I did last spring, when you and Helen made my wedding dress. Darling Helen! When did you see her last?” “I was there five weeks ago,” Marian replied; “I saw them all, and told them I was coming to New York.” “Do they miss me any? Do they talk of me? Do they wish me back again?” Katy asked, and Marian replied, “They talked of little else, that is your own family. Dr. Morris, I think, did not mention your name. He has grown very silent and reserved,” and Marian’s eyes were fixed inquiringly upon Katy, as if to ascertain how much she knew of the cause for Morris’s reserve. But Katy had no suspicion, and only replied, “Perhaps he is vexed that I do not write to him oftener, but I can’t. I think of him a great deal, and respect him more than any living man, except, of course, Wilford; but when I try to write, something comes in between me and what I wish to say, for I want to convince him that I am _not_ as frivolous as he thinks I am. I have _not_ forgotten the Sunday-school, nor the church service; but in the city it is so hard to be good, and the service and music seem all for show, and I feel so hateful when I see Juno and Wilford’s mother putting their heads down on velvet cushions, knowing as I do that they both are thinking either of their own bonnets or those just in front.” “Are you not a little uncharitable?” Marian asked, laughing in spite of herself at the picture Katy drew of fashion trying to imitate religion in its humility. “Perhaps so,” Katy answered. “I grow bad from looking behind the scenes, and the worst is that I do not care,” and then Katy went back again to the farm-house asking numberless questions and reaching finally the _business_ which had brought her to Marian’s room. There were spots on Marian’s neck, and her lips were white, as she grasped the bundles tossed into her lap—the yards and yards of lace and embroidery, linen, and cambric, which she was expected to make for the wife of Wilford Cameron; and her voice was husky as she asked directions or made suggestions of her own.