Elmira was glad to ride; she thought that she should die of shame should she walk home and meet Lawrence Prescott again.

Imogen drove.  She was the older, but the larger and stronger of the two.  Elmira sat in the rear gloom of the covered wagon with Sarah, holding her silk gown spread carefully over her knees.  She thought of nothing all the way but the possibility of meeting Lawrence.  She made up her mind that if she did she would sit far back in the wagon and not thrust her head forward at all.  “If he acts as if he thought I might be in here, and looks real hard, then it will be time for me to do my part,” she thought.

Whenever she saw a man or a team in the distance, her heart beat violently, but it was never Lawrence.  All her sweet panic of expectation would have been quieted had she known that he was at that very time seated in Miss Camilla Merritt’s arbor, drinking tea and eating fruit cake with her and pretty Lucina.

“Didn’t you think Elmira seemed dreadful kind of flighty to-day—­still as a mouse one minute and carryin’ on the next?” Sarah asked Imogen, as they were driving home in the evening.  They had waited, staying to tea and letting the horse rest, until the full moon arose.

“Yes, I did,” said Imogen, “but Ann was just like her at her age.  That silk is well enough, but it ain’t no such quality as my blue an’ yellow changeable one.”

“Well, I dun’no’ as it is.  I dun’no’ as it’s as good as my figured brown one.”

It was a beautiful spring night; the moon was one for lovers to light their fondest thoughts and fancies into reality.  The two old sisters driving home met and passed many young couples on the country road.  “If they don’t look out I shall run over some of them fellars an’ girls,” said Imogen.  “I don’t b’lieve Elmira has ever had anybody waitin’ on her, do you, Sarah?”

“Never heard of anybody,” replied Sarah.  “Well, anyhow, she’s goin’ to have a real handsome dress out of that silk.”

“Yes, she is,” said Imogen, and just then from before the great plunging feet of her horse a pair of young lovers sprang with a laugh, having seen nothing of team nor the old sisters nor yet of the little side lamps of happiness they bore, in the great dazzling circle of their own.

Elmira finished her dress Saturday.  She had sat up nearly two nights stitching on it, but nobody would have dreamed it when she came down out of her chamber Sunday morning all ready for meeting.  Her mother was sitting in the parlor beside a window, with her Bible on her knees.  The window was opened wide, and the room was full of the reverberations of the meeting bell.  Always on a pleasant Sunday morning in summer-time Ann Edwards sat with her Bible at the open window and listened to the meeting bell.

As Elmira entered, the bell tolled again, and the long wavering and dying of its sweet multiple tones commenced afresh.  Elmira stood before her mother, and turned slowly about that she might view her on all sides in her new attire.