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He passed, humming his army song, and never knew how the world lighted up again within a foot of him. He passed so near that Sharley by stretching out her hand could have touched him,—so near that she could hear the breath he drew. He was thinking to himself, perhaps, that no one had come from home to meet him, and he had been long away; but then, it was not his mother’s fashion of welcome, and quickening his pace at the thought of her, he left the tangle of green behind, and the little wet face crushed breathless up against the grape-leaves, and was out of sight and knew n
othing.

Sharley sprang up and bounded home. Her mother opened her languid eyes wide when the child came in.

“Dear me, Charlotte, how you do go chirping and hopping round, and me with this great baby and my sick-headache! I can’t chirp and hop. You look as if somebody’d set you on fire! What’s the matter with you, child?”

What was the matter, indeed! Sharley, in a little spasm of penitence,—one can afford to be penitent when one is happy,—took the baby and went away to think about it. Surely he would come to see her to-night; he did not often come home without seeing Sharley; and he had been long away. At any rate he was here; in this very Green Valley where the days had dragged so drearily without him; his eyes saw the same sky that hers saw; his breath drank the same sweet evening wind; his feet trod the roads that she had trodden yesterday, and would tread again to-morrow. But I will not tell them any more of this,—shall I, Sharley?

She threw her head back and looked up, as she walked to and fro through the yard with the heavy baby fretting on her shoulder. The skies were aflame now, for the sun was dropping slowly. “He is here!” they said. A belated robin took up the word: “He is here!” The yellow maple glittered all over with it: “Sharley, he is here!”

“The butter is here,” called her mother relevantly from the house. “The butter is here now, and it’s time to see about supper, Charlotte.”

“More calico!” said impatient Sharley, and she gave the baby a jerk.

Whether he came or whether he did not come, there was no more time for Sharley to dream that night. In fact, there seldom was any time to dream in Mrs. Guest’s household. Mrs. Guest believed in keeping people busy. She was busy enough herself when her head did not ache. When it did, it was the least she could do to see that other people were busy.

So Sharley had the table to set, and the biscuit to bake, and the tea to make, and the pears to pick over; she must run upstairs to bring her mother a handkerchief; she must hurry for her father’s clothes-brush when he came in tired, and not so good-humored as he might be, from his store; she must stop to rebuild the baby’s block-house, that Moppet had kicked over, and snap Moppet’s dirty, dimpled fingers for kicking it over, and endure the shriek that Moppet set up therefor. She must suggest to Methuselah that he could find, perhaps, a more suitable book-mark for Robinson Crusoe than his piece of bread and molasses, and intimate doubts as to the propriety of Nate’s standing on the table-cloth and sitting on the toast-rack. And then Moppet was at that baby again, dropping very cold pennies down his neck. They must be made presentable for supper, too, Moppet and Nate and Methuselah,—Methuselah, Nate, and Moppet; brushed and washed and dusted and coaxed and scolded and borne with. There was no end to it. Would there ever be any end to it? Sharley sometimes asked of her weary thoughts. Sharley’s life, like the lives of most girls at her age, was one great unanswered question. It grew tiresome occasionally, as monologues are apt to do.