It was a beautiful afternoon, the house yards were full of the late summer flowers, the fields were white and gold with arnica and wild-carrot instead of buttercups and daisies, the blackberries were ripe along the road-side, and there were sturdy thickets of weeds picked out with golden buttons of tansy over the stone walls.  Lois stepped along lightly.  She did not look like the same girl of three months ago.  It was strange that in spite of all her terrible distress of mind and hard struggles since she came to Elliot it should have been so, but it was.  Every life has its own conditions, although some are poisons.  Whether it had been as Mrs. Babcock thought, that the girl had been afflicted with no real malady, only the languor of the spring, intensified and fostered in some subtle fashion by her mother’s anxiety, or whether it had been the purer air of Elliot that had brought about the change, to whatever it might have been due, she was certainly better.

Lois had on an old pink muslin dress that she had worn many a summer, indeed the tucks had been let down to accord with her growth, and showed in bars of brighter pink around the skirt.  But the color of the dress became her well, her young shoulders filled out the thin fabric with sweet curves that overcame the old fashion of its make; her slender arms showed through the sleeves; and her small fair face was set in a muslin frill like a pink corolla.  She had to pass the cemetery on her way home.  As she came in sight of its white shafts, and headstones gleaming out from its dark foliage, she met Francis Arms.  She started when she saw him, and said, “Good-afternoon” nervously; then was passing on, but he stopped her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I was going home.”

“See here—­I don’t know as you want to—­but—­do you remember how we went to walk in the cemetery that first day after you came?”

Lois nodded.  He could see only the tip of her chin under her broad hat.

“Suppose—­if you haven’t anything else to do—­if you are not busy—­that we go in there now a little ways?” said Francis.

“I guess I’d better not,” replied Lois, in a trembling voice.

“It’s real cool in there.”

“I’m afraid I’d better not.”

“Well,” said Francis, “of course I won’t tease you if you don’t want to.”

He tried to make his tone quite unconcerned and to smile.  He was passing on, but Lois spoke.

“I might go in there just a minute,” she said.

Francis turned quickly, his face lighted up.  They walked along together to the cemetery gate; he opened it and they entered and passed slowly down the drive-way.

The yard was largely overhung by evergreen trees, which held in their boughs cool masses of blue gloom.  It was cool there, as Francis had said, although it was quite a warm day.  The flowers on the sunny graves hung low, unless they had been freshly tended, when they stood erect in dark circles.  Some of the old uncared-for graves were covered with rank growths of grass and weeds, which seemed fairly instinct with merry life this summer afternoon.  Crickets and cicadas thrilled through them; now and then a bird flew up.  It was like a resurrection stir.