They were only having two meals a day now that the corn was all picked, and dinner came so late in the afternoon that there was already a blaze of sunset colour in the west as she passed around the barn and started down the bank of the stream. The sun had set, but was still reflected on the heaps of billowy gray clouds just above the horizon. It made the snow in front of her a delicate pink. The girl had not got far enough from the house to see a sunset for months. The freshness and keenness of the air, the colours in the sky, the grandeur and sublimity of it all chased away her anger and left her in a mood to reason over her situation. She followed the cow-path down to the bed of the stream and then threaded her way along its winding route for a greater distance than she had ever gone before. A broken willow barred her way after a time, and she climbed up on its swaying trunk and let her feet dangle over the frozen streamlet below. The snow made lighter than usual the early evening and extended the time she could safely stay so far from the house. The colours faded rapidly from the sky and the bewildered girl returned to her own affairs, which were puzzling enough. Of late she had found herself unable to maintain her enthusiasm. She found herself increasingly irritable--from her standpoint the one thing most to be despised in others and which she had supposed most impossible in herself. There were so many unforeseen possibilities within herself that she devoted her entire attention to her own actions and impulses, and was completely drawn away from the consideration of the motives of others by her struggle with the elemental forces in which she found herself engulfed. The temper aroused by John's objection to her Thanksgiving company had indications in spite of the fact that she had controlled it. Elizabeth knew that she had but barely kept her speech within the limits of kindliness and consideration for Mrs. Hunter, who had not wished to frustrate her plans at all, and she knew that she would be less likely to do so if the offence were repeated. She knew that Mrs. Hunter tried with real honesty of purpose to keep on good terms with her, and yet she also knew that she was increasingly annoyed with whatever she did. There was an element of unfairness in her attitude toward the older woman which alarmed her. "I'm just like pa, after all," she thought as she swung her feet and looked in a troubled way down at the frozen stream below. Elizabeth reflected that when Aunt Susan, or Silas, or Luther Hansen came into the house she became instantly her own buoyant, optimistic self: not that she intentionally feigned such feelings for the benefit of her company, but she felt the presence of trust, of faith in herself and her powers. She did not recognize that such trust was necessary to the unfoldment of character, nor even that it was her birthright.