Greenwood’s rent-money has been accumulating four months, while I have been visiting you and Mrs. Bird; and the Greenwoods are willing to pay sixty dollars a month for the house still, even though times are dull; so I am hopelessly wealthy,—­but on the whole I am very glad.  The old desire to do something, and be something, seems to have faded out of my life with all the other beautiful things.  I think I shall go to a girls’ college and study, or find some other way of getting through the hateful, endless years that stretch out ahead!  Why, I am only a little past seventeen, and I may live to be ninety!  I do not see how I can ever stand this sort of thing for seventy-three years!”

Mrs. Noble smiled in spite of herself.  “Just apply yourself to getting through this year, Polly dear, and let the other seventy-two take care of themselves.  They will bring their own cares and joys and responsibilities and problems, little as you realize it now.  This year, grievous as it seems, will fade by and by, until you can look back at it with resignation and without tears.”

“I don’t want it to fade!” cried Polly passionately.  “I never want to look back at it without tears!  I want to be faithful always; I want never to forget, and never to feel less sorrow than I do this minute!”

“Take that blue-covered Emerson on the table, Polly; open it at the essay on ‘Compensation,’ and read the page marked with the orange leaf.”

The tears were streaming down Polly’s cheeks, but she opened the book, and read with a faltering voice:—­

“We cannot part with our f—­fr—­friends.  We cannot let our angels go. [Sob.] We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. . . .  We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yesterday. [Sob.] We linger in the ruins of the old tent where once we had shelter. . . .  We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. [Sob.] But we sit and weep in vain.  We cannot stay amid the ruins.  The voice of the Almighty saith, ‘Up and onward for evermore!’ . . .  The sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all sorrow. . . .  The man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.”

[Illustration:  “She opened the book and read.”]

“Do you see, Polly?”

“Yes, I see; but oh, I was so happy being a garden flower with the sunshine on my head, and I can’t seem to care the least little bit for being a banian-tree!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Noble, smiling through her own tears, “I fear that God will never insist on your ’yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men’ unless you desire it.  Not all sunny garden flowers become banian-trees by the falling of the walls.  Some of them are crushed beneath the ruins, and never send any more color or fragrance into the world.”