Ann dropped into one of the best chairs, and sat there, her little dark face very pale.  “Should I have the—­papers?” she gasped at length.

“Your papers?  Yes, child, you can have them.”

“I don’t want them,” cried Ann, “never!  I want them to stay just where they are, till my time is out.  If I am adopted, I don’t want the papers!”

Mrs. Polly stared.  She had never known how Ann had taken the indentures with her on her run-away trip years ago; but now Ann told her the whole story.  In her gratitude to her mistress, and her contrition, she had to.

It was so long ago in Ann’s childhood, it did not seem so very dreadful to Mrs. Polly, probably.  But Ann insisted on the indentures remaining in the desk, even after the papers of adoption were made out, and she had become “Ann Wales.”  It seemed to go a little way toward satisfying her conscience.  This adoption meant a good deal to Ann; for besides a legal home, and a mother, it secured to her a right in a comfortable property in the future.  Mrs. Polly Wales was considered very well off.  She was a smart business-woman, and knew how to take care of her property too.  She still hired Phineas Adams to carry on the blacksmith’s business, and kept her farm-work running just as her husband had.  Neither she nor Ann were afraid of work, and Ann Wales used to milk the cows, and escort them to and from pasture, as faithfully as Ann Ginnins.

It was along in springtime when Ann was adopted, and Mrs. Polly fulfilled her part of the contract in the indentures by getting the Sunday suit therein spoken of.

They often rode on horseback to meeting, but they usually walked on the fine Sundays in spring.  Ann had probably never been so happy in her life as she was walking by Mrs. Polly’s side to meeting that first Sunday after her adoption.  Most of the way was through the woods; the tender light green boughs met over their heads; the violets and anemones were springing beside their path.  There were green buds and white blossoms all around; the sky showed blue between the waving branches, and the birds were singing.

Ann in her pretty petticoat of rose-colored stuff, stepping daintily over the young grass and the flowers, looked and felt like a part of it all.  Her dark cheeks had a beautiful red glow on them; her black eyes shone.  She was as straight and graceful and stately as an Indian.

“She’s as handsome as a picture,” thought Mrs. Polly in her secret heart.  A good many people said that Ann resembled Mrs. Polly in her youth, and that may have added force to her admiration.

Her new gown was very fine for those days; but fine as she was, and adopted daughter though she was, Ann did not omit her thrifty ways for once.  This identical morning Mrs. Polly and she carried their best shoes under their arms, and wore their old ones, till within a short distance from the meeting-house.  Then the old shoes were tucked away under a stone wall for safety, and the best ones put on.  Stone walls, very likely, sheltered a good many well-worn little shoes, of a Puritan Sabbath, that their prudent owners might appear in the House of God trimly shod.  Ah! these beautiful, new, peaked-toed, high-heeled shoes of Ann’s—­what would she have said to walking in them all the way to meeting!