“Mother don’t want to give up her wedding-dress.”

“Women always have their wedding-dresses made over for their daughters,” Elmira said, gravely.

“What color is it?”

“A real pretty green, with a little sheeny figure in it; and I am going to have a new ribbon on my bonnet.”

“It’s ’most ten miles to Granby; hadn’t I better get a team and take you over?” said Jerome.

“No; it’s a beautiful morning, and it will do me good to walk.  I shall go to Imogen and Sarah’s and rest, and have a bite of something before I come back too.  I may not be home very early.  You’d better run along, Jerome, and I’ve got to get ready.”

Jerome gave his burden of shoes a hitch of final adjustment.  “Well,” said he, “I’d just as lief take you over, if you say so.”

“I don’t want to be taken over.  I want to take myself over,” laughed Elmira, and ran into the house before a flurry of wind.

That morning the wind was quite high, and though it was soft and warm, was hard to breast on a ten-mile stretch.  Elmira’s strength was mostly of nerve, and she had little staying power of muscle.  Before she had walked three miles on the road to Granby she felt as if she were wading deeper and deeper against a mightier current of spring; the scent of the young blossoms suffocated her with sweet heaviness; the birds’ songs rang wearily in her ears.  She sat down on the stone wall to rest a few moments, panting softly.  She laid her parcel of silk on the wall beside her and folded her hands in her lap.  The day was so warm she had put on, for the first time that spring, her pink muslin gown, which had served her for a matter of eight seasons, and showed in stripes of brighter color around the skirt where the tucks had been let out to accommodate her growth.  Her pink skirts fluttered around her as she sat there, smiling straight ahead out of the pink scoop of a sunbonnet like her dress, with a curious sweet directness, as if she saw some one whom she loved—­as, indeed, she did.  Elmira, full of the innocent selfishness of youth, saw such a fair vision of her own self clad in her mother’s wedding silk, with loving and approving eyes upon her, that she could but smile.

Elmira rested a few minutes, then gathered up her parcel and started again on her way.  She reached the place in the road where the brook willows border it on either side, and on the east side the brook, which is a river in earliest spring, flows with broken gurgles over a stony bed, and slackened her pace, thinking she would walk leisurely there, for the young willows screened the sun like green veils of gossamer, and the wind did not press her back so hard, and then she heard the trot, trot of a horse’s feet behind her.

She did not look around, but walked more closely to the side of the road and the splendid east file of willows.  The trot, trot of the horse’s feet came nearer and nearer, and finally paused alongside of her; then a man’s voice, half timid, half gayly daring, called, “Good-day, Miss Elmira Edwards!”