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Sharley, upstairs, had slammed her door and locked it, and was pacing hotly back and forth across her room. Poor Sharley! Sun and moon and stars were darkened; the clouds had returned after the rain. She tore off the new hat and Sunday things savagely; put on her old chocolate-colored morning-dress, with a grim satisfaction in making herself as ugly as possible; pulled down the ribboned chignon which she had braided, singing, half an hour ago (her own, that chignon); screwed her hair under a net into the most unbecoming little pug of which it was capable, and went drearily down stairs. Nate, enacting the cheerful drama of “Jeff Davis on a sour apple-tree,” hung from the balusters, purple, gasping, tied to the verge of strangulation by the energetic Moppet. The baby was calmly sitting in the squash-pies.

Halcombe Dike, coming home from church that morning a little in advance of the crowd, saw a “Pre-raphaelite” in the doorway of Mr. Guest’s barn, and quietly unlatching the gate came nearer to examine it. It was worth examining. There was a ground of great shadows and billowy hay; a pile of crimson apples struck out by the light through a crack; two children and a kitten asleep together in a sunbeam; a girl on the floor with a baby crawling over her; a girl in a chocolate-colored dress with yellow leaves in her hair,—her hair upon her shoulders, and her eyelashes wet.

“Well, Sharley!”

She looked up to see him standing there with his grave, amused smile. Her first thought was to jump and run; her second, to stand fire.

“Well, Mr. Halcombe! Moppet’s stuck yellow leaves all over me; my hair’s down; I’ve got on a horrid old morning-dress; look pretty to see company, don’t I?”

“Very, Sharley.”

“Besides,” said Sharley, “I’ve been crying, and my eyes are red.”

“So I see.”

“No, you don’t, for I’m not looking at you.”

“But I am looking at you.”

“Oh!”

“What were you crying about, Sharley!”

“Because my grandmother’s dead,” said Sharley, after some reflection.

“Ah, yes, I remember! about ’36, I think, her tombstone gives as the date of that sad event?”

“I think it’s wicked in people to laugh at people’s dead grandmothers,” said Sharley, severely. “You ought to be at church.”

“So I was.”

“I wasn’t; mother wouldn’t—” But her lip quivered, and she stopped. The memory of the new hat and Sunday dress, of the golden church-bells, and hush of happy Sabbath-morning thoughts came up. That he should see her now, in this plight, with her swollen eyes and pouting lips, and her heart full of wicked discontent!

“Wouldn’t what, Sharley?”

” Don’t! ” she pleaded, with a sob; “I’m cross; I can’t talk. Besides, I shall cry again, and I won’t cry again. You may let me alone, or you may go away. If you don’t go away you may just tell me what you have been doing with yourself this whole long summer. Working hard, of course. I don’t see but that everybody has to work hard in this world! I hate this world! I suppose you’re a rich man by this time?”

The young man looked at the chocolate dress, the yellow leaves, the falling hair, and answered gravely,—a little coldly, Sharley thought,—that his prospects were not encouraging just now. Perhaps they never had been encouraging; only that he in his young ardor had thought so. He was older now, and wiser. He understood what a hard pull was before young architects in America,—any young architect, the best of young architects,—and whether there was a place for him remained to be proved. He was willing to work hard, and to hope long; but he grew a little tired of it sometimes, and so—He checked himself suddenly. “As if,” thought Sharley, “he were tired of talking so long to me! He thought my question impertinent.” She hid her face in her drooping hair, and wished herself a mile away.