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Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody but a girl knows how girls dream over their ribbons.

“He is coming!” whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to the little bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the glass,—”He is coming!”

Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon the doorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace; yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair—brown, I think—and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to stroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten.

How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge! Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o’clock whistle smote the air, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound over the barren outline.

Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and down the slope, called after her:—

“Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you’d let the baby go too. Well, she doesn’t hear!”

I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be frank, she was rather tired of that baby.

There was a foot-path through the brown and golden grass, and Sharley ran over it, under the maple, which was dropping yellow leaves, and down to the knot of trees which lined the farther walls. There was a nook here—she knew just where—into which one might creep, tangled in with the low-hanging green of apple and spruce, and wound about with grape-vines. Stooping down, careful not to catch that barbe upon the brambles, and careful not to soil so much as a sprig of the clean light calico, Sharley hid herself in the shadow. She could see unseen now the great puffs of purple smoke, the burning line of sandy bank, the station, and the uphill road to the village. Oddly enough, some old Scripture words—Sharley was not much in the habit of quoting Scripture—came into her thoughts just as she had curled herself comfortably up beside the wall, her watching face against the grape-leaves: “But what went ye out for to see?” “What went ye out for to see?” She went on, dreamily finishing, “A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet,” and stopped, scarlet. What had prophets to do with her old friend Halcombe Dike?

Ah, but he was coming! he was coming! To Sharley’s eyes the laboring, crazy locomotive which puffed him asthmatically up to the little depot was a benevolent dragon,—if there were such things as benevolent dragons,—very horrible, and she was very much afraid of it; but very gracious, and she should like to go out and pat it on the shoulder.

The train slackened, jarred, and stopped. An old woman with thirteen bundles climbed out laboriously. Two small boys turned somersaults from the platform. Sharley strained her wistful eyes till they ached. There was nobody else. Sharley was very young, and very much disappointed, and she cried. The glory had died from the skies. The world had gone out.

She was sitting there all in a heap, her face in her hands, and her heart in her foolish eyes, when a step sounded near, and a voice humming an old army song. She knew it; he had taught it to her himself. She knew the step; for she had long ago trained her slippered feet to keep pace with it. He had stepped from the wrong side of the car, perhaps, or her eager eyes had missed him; at any rate here he was,—a young man, with honest eyes, and mouth a little grave; a very plainly dressed young man,—his coat was not as new as Sharley’s calico,—but a young man with a good step of his own,—strong, elastic,—and a nervous hand.