“She’s comin’ out of it now,” observed Sister McGafferty. “All of you’d better go downstairs except Sister Holmes and me. Let her be without disturbin’ a while. We’ll have plenty of other chances to enjoy Sister Heddin’s company.” The neighbors and Jesse went submissively downstairs, but Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife kept on laughing with some effort, as if she felt afraid of ending in a sob. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ll be in the neighborhood again, Serene!” she said. “Things wouldn’t never been right in this world if they’d turned out the other way. Don’t look at me like you’s thinkin’ of the dead. But rouse up and feel better. There’s your Aunt Lindy and Hod standin’ at the gate: I can see ’em through the winder. They’re talkin’ mighty serious, and she don’t look so well satisfied as she did. But you must do well by her, Sereny. Give her the old spinnin’-wheel that stands in the smoke-house!” ROSE DAY TIME, 1875 “I do believe this is rose day,” said Infant, standing on the top step of the veranda in delight. “I _know_ it’s soap-boiling day,” asserted her twin sister, who had been baptized Marilla Victoria when she was baptized Infanta Isabella, quite forty years before. These twins entered the world at a period when flowery, daring names were the extreme of fashion, and previous to a rebound to plain and strong Ann, Elizabeth, Mary, Hannah, Jane, and their various combinations. Infant came very near being labeled Lovey Lucilla, and she felt thankful for her escape, and even attached to her diminutive. Belle would never have suited her (she was not belle), while Infant did not shame her (she was more or less an infant at any age). She was slender, blue-eyed, and smooth-skinned, so smooth that wrinkles could scarcely make their indentation. And it never ceased to be appropriate for her to wear her hair in a braid down her back, tied with ribbons the color of the dress she wore. Infant herself could not separate the gray hair from the blond, nor did she care whether it was all blond or all gray. She scampered over a fence and swung in the cherry-trees. Her long tranced girlhood never ended; and the slow life of the farm, simple as grass and wholesome as new milk, kept up the illusion that time was eternity. In their neighborhood these twins had been the Baldwin girls when they first toddled into meeting, when they went off to be educated at an expensive school, when they came back to paint and to play on a grand piano, when their parents died and they took charge of the farm; and the Baldwin girls would probably be their title when they should become contemporary with all living grandmothers.