Nobody would have dreamed how day after day she had journeyed stiffly down to the old garden spot behind the house to watch the progress of the rhubarb, and how triumphantly she had brought up those green and rosy stalks.  Lois had always been very fond of rhubarb.

She ate it now with a keen relish.  Her mother contrived that she should have nearly all of it; she made a show of helping herself twice, but she took very little.  But it was to her as if she also tasted every spoonful which her daughter ate, and as if it had the flavor of a fruit of Paradise and satisfied her very soul.

After supper Lois began packing up the cups and saucers.

“Now you go in the other room an’ set down, an’ let me take care of the dishes,” said Mrs. Field, timidly.

Lois faced about instantly.  “Now, mother, I’d just like to know what you mean?” said she.  “I guess I ain’t quite so far gone but what I can wash up a few dishes.  You act as if you wanted to make me out sick in spite of myself.”

“I thought mebbe you was kind of tired,” said her mother, apologetically.

“I ain’t tired.  I’m jest as well able to wash up the supper dishes as I ever was.”  Lois carried the cups and saucers to the sink with a resolute air, and Mrs. Field said no more.  She went into her bedroom to change her dress; she was going to evening meeting.

Lois washed and put away the dishes; then she went into the sitting-room, and sat down by the open window.  She leaned her cheek against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields a bird was calling.  Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her as if the blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future.  She was ill, poor, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable certainty of it.  It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden field of heaven.

She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted.  Mrs. Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety when she saw her daughter’s head in the window seemed to actually misplace the air.

Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.

“Don’t shut the window, mother,” said Lois.

“I’m dreadful afraid you’ll catch cold, child.”

“No, I sha’n’t, either.  I wish you wouldn’t fuss so, mother.”

Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.

“Goin’ to meetin’, mother?” Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.

“I thought mebbe I would.”

“I guess I won’t go.  I want to sew some on my dress this evenin’.”

“Sha’n’t you mind stayin’ alone, if I go?”

“Mind stayin’ alone? of course I sha’n’t.  You get the strangest ideas lately, mother.”