"Miss Royall," said she, as if she had been speaking of the Queen of Sheba, "is busy with her own circle of friends. She is now visiting at Governor Wade's. She is almost a member of the family there. And her law matters take up a good deal of her time, too. Mr. Gowdy says he thinks he may be able to get her property for her soon. She can hardly be expected to come out for this." And grandma swept her hands about to cast down into nothingness my house, my affairs, and me. This plunged me into the depths of misery. So, when I furnished the cream for the donation picnic at Crabapple Grove in strawberry time, I went prepared to see myself discarded by my love. She was there, and I had not overestimated her coldness toward me. Buck Gowdy came for only a few minutes, and these he spent eating ice-cream with Elder Thorndyke, with Virginia across the table from him, looking at her in that old way of his. Before he left, she went over and sat with Bob Wade and Kittie Fleming; but he joined them pretty soon, and I saw him bending down in that intimate way of his, first speaking to Kittie, and then for a longer time, to Virginia--and I thought of the time when she would not even speak his name! Once she walked off by herself in the trees, and looked back at me as she went; but I was done with her, I said to myself, and hung back. She soon returned to the company, and began flirting with Matthias Trickey, who was no older than I, and just as much of a country bumpkin. I found out afterward that right off after that, Matthias began going to see her, with his pockets full of candy with mottoes on it. I called this sparking, and the sun of my hopes set in a black bank of clouds. I do not remember that I was ever so unhappy, not even when John Rucker was in power over me and my mother, not even when I was seeking my mother up and down the canal and the Lakes, not even when I found that she had gone away on her last long journey that bleak winter day in Madison. I now devoted myself to the memory of my old dreams for my mother, and blamed myself for treason to her memory, getting out that old letter and the poor work-worn shoe, and weeping over them in my lonely nights in the cabin on the prairie. I can not now think of this without pity for myself; and though Grandma Thorndyke was one of the best women that ever lived on this footstool, and was much to me in my after life, I can not think of her happiness at my despair without blaming her memory a little. But she meant well. She had better plans, as she thought, for Virginia, than any which she thought I could have. 3