We talked.  Clara had her seasons of soul-talk as she called it, and that night she read me a full page of her inner self the purport of which I shall never forget.  The more she revealed to me of herself the more I loved her, and her words suggested thoughts that filled my soul—­thoughts which, in depths within myself I had never dreamed of, found and swept a string that ere long broke its sweet harmonies on my spirit.  I seemed, all at once, to develop in spiritual stature and to have become complex to myself.

When we said “good night” to the folks below and went up stairs together, Clara caught my hand and said,

“Come, mademoiselle, come to my room, please,” and of course I went, making a mock courtesy as if I were a queen, and she my maid.  She unpinned my linen collar and unhooked my dress, while I sat wonder struck, saying nothing until I felt the fleecy blue silk being thrown over my shoulders, when I essayed to articulate something.  But when my head emerged from the dress, she playfully covered my mouth with her hand, and proceeded to fasten the dress which seemed just to fit; then came the delicate lace and the lemon bow.  Taking my hand she led me to the glass, surveyed me from head to foot, clapped her hands like a glad child, and cried,

“A perfect fit, but I was afraid.”

“Why, Clara,” I said, “how, what?”

“Never, never mind, you like it, I did it myself, and I wore it first only to see how it struck you.  ’Tis yours, my dear, go and put it away.”

I did not say thank you even, for she would not let me.  I just kissed her and went to my room, to my little room with its high-post bedstead, three wooden chairs and shabby hair-cloth trunk, and dressed in that beautiful blue dress with that new silk bow.  I could not help taking the old one out of the drawer to contrast it with the new, and although it did look soiled and shabby, I thought I was almost wicked to have felt so troubled at my little adornments, and then resolved to keep that little old faded lemon ribbon as long as I should live, and I have it now.

Carefully I unpinned that new bow, laying it, with the first real lace collars I had ever owned, in a mahogany box, as tenderly as though they were pearls, and hung the blue Foulard in my closet between my best much-worn alpaca and my afternoon gingham.

That night I dreamed that when father went to feed the chickens in the barn yard, a beautiful bird with silky wings of blue fluttered down among them to be fed.  How impressible my artless brain!  As great an event was this to me, as the inauguration of our highest potentate to the people.