Everywhere about her were the revolutions of those unseen wheels of nature whose immortal trend is towards the completion of time, and whose momentum can overlap the grave; and the child was within them and swept onward with the perfecting flowers, and the ripening fruit, and the insects which were feeling their wings; and all unconsciously, in a moment as it were, she unfolded a little farther towards her own heyday of bloom.  Suddenly from those heights of the primitive and the eternal upon which a child starts and where she still lingered she saw her future before her, shining with new lights, and a wonderful conviction of bliss to come was over her.  It was that conviction which comes at times to all unconquered souls, and which has the very essence of truth in it, since it overleaps the darkness of life that lies between them and that bliss.  Suddenly Ellen felt that she was born to great happiness, and all that was to come was towards that end.  Her heart beat loud in her ears.  There was a whippoorwill calling in some trees to the left; the moon was dim under a golden dapple of clouds.  She could not feel her hands or her feet; she seemed to feel nothing except her soul.

Then she heard, loud and sweet and clear, a boy’s whistle, one of the popular tunes of the day.  It came nearer and nearer, and it was in the same key with the child’s thoughts and dreams.  Then she saw a slender figure dark against the moonlight stop at a fence, and she jumped up and ran towards it with no hesitation through the dewy grass; and it was the boy, Granville Joy.  He stood looking at her.  He had a handsome, eager face, and Ellen looked at him, her lips parted, her face like a lily in the white light.

“Hulloo,” said the boy.

“Hulloo,” Ellen responded, faintly.

Granville extended one rough, brown, boyish hand over the fence, and Ellen laid her little, soft hand in it.  He pulled her gently close, then Ellen lifted her face, and the boy bent his, and the two kissed each other over the fence.  Then the boy went on down the street, but he did not whistle, and Ellen went back to the doorstep, and, looking about to be sure that none of the men in the sitting-room saw, pulled off one little shoe and drew forth a sprig of southernwood, or boy’s-love, which was crushed under her foot.

That day Floretta Vining had told her that if she would put a sprig of boy’s-love in her shoe, the very first boy she met would be the one she was going to marry; and Ellen, who was passing from one grade of school to another, had tried it.

Chapter XIV

The high-school master was a distant relative of the Lloyd’s, through whom he had obtained the position.  One evening when he was taking tea with them at Cynthia Lennox’s, he spoke of Ellen.  “I have one really remarkable scholar,” he said, with a curious air of self-gratulation, as if he were principally responsible for it; “her name is Brewster—­Ellen Brewster.”