she had kept up in the busiest seasons); but when the question of going out was discussed at dinner, she usually ended by sending the children to a lecture or a harmless play with Miss Polly.  “When you work as hard as I do, there isn’t much else for you in life,” she concluded regretfully, and there swept over her, as on that May afternoon, a sense of failure, of dissatisfaction, of disappointment.  Youth was slipping, slipping, and she had missed something.

At such moments she thought sadly of her life, of its possibilities and its significance.  It ought in the nature of things, she felt, to mean so much more than it had meant; it ought to have been so much more vital, so much more satisfying and complete.  As it was, she could remember of it only scattered ends, frayed places, useless beginnings, and broken promises.  With how many beliefs had she started, and now not one of them remained with her—­well, hardly one of them!  The dropping of illusion after illusion—­that was what the years had brought to her as they passed; for she saw that she had always been growing farther and farther away from tradition, from accepted opinions, from the dogmas and the ideals of the ages.  The experience and the wisdom of others had failed her at the very beginning.

At the end of the week, when she and Miss Polly were watering seeds in the yard one afternoon at sunset, the man from the first floor came leisurely up the walk, and removing a big black cigar from his mouth, wished them “good evening” as he passed.

“Good evening,” responded Gabriella coolly.  She had resolved that there should be no interchange of unnecessary civilities between the first floor and the upper storeys.  “One can never tell how far men of that class will presume,” she thought sternly.

“Don’t you think he’s good lookin’, honey?” inquired Miss Polly in a whisper when O’Hara had entered the house with his latchkey and closed the door after him.

“Is he?  I didn’t look at him.”

“You wouldn’t think he’d ever had a day’s sickness in his life.  I reckon he’s as big as your Cousin Micajah Berkeley was.  You don’t recollect, him, do you?”

“He died before I was born.  Are those wisps of gray green, in the border, pinks, Miss Polly?”

“Clove pinks like your ma used to raise.  It ain’t the right time to set ’em out, but I sent all the way down to Richmond for ’em.  I’m goin’ to get a microphylla rose, too, in the fall.  Do you reckon it would grow up North, Gabriella?”

“Well, we might try, anyhow.  Where are the children?”

“Fanny’s over at Carlie’s, an’ Archibald said he was goin’ to the gymnasium befo’ dinner.  He’s just crazy about gettin’ as strong as the man on the first floor.  He was punching a ball this mornin’, and Archibald saw him.  I never knew the boy to take such a sudden fancy.”

“When did he speak to him?” asked Gabriella, and her tone had a touch of asperity so unusual that Miss Polly exclaimed in astonishment:  “For goodness sake, Gabriella, what has come over you?  Do you feel any sort of palpitations?  Shall I run after the harts-horn?”