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Time and twilight were creeping on together. Sharley was sure that she had heard the gate shut, and that some one sat talking with her mother upon the front doorsteps.

“O Moppet! Couldn’t you go to sleep without me this one night,—not this one night?” and the hot, impatient tears came in the dark.

“O no,” said immovable Moppet, “of course I can’t; and I ‘spect I’m going to lie awake all night too. You’d ought to be glad to stay with your little brothers. The girl in my library-book, she was glad, anyhow.”

Sharley threw herself back in the rocking-chair and let her eyes brim over. She could hear the voices on the doorsteps plainly; her mother’s wiry tones and the visitor’s; it was a man’s voice, low and less frequent. Why did not her mother call her? Had not he asked to see her? Had he not? Would nobody ever come up to take her place? Would Moppet never go to sleep? There he was peering at her over the top of the sheet, with two great, mischievous, wide-awake eyes. And time and twilight were wearing on.

Let us talk about “affliction” with our superior, reproving smile! Graves may close and hearts may break, fortunes, hopes, and souls be ruined, but Moppet wouldn’t go to sleep; and Sharley in her rocking-chair doubted her mother’s love, the use of life, and the benevolence of God.

“I’m lying awake to think about Buriah,” observed Moppet, pleasantly. “David wanted to marry Buriah’s wife. She was a very nice woman.”

Silence followed this announcement.

“Sharley? you needn’t think I’m asleep,—any such thing. Besides, if you go down you’d better believe I’ll holler! See here: s’pose I’d slung my dipper at Hal Dike, jest as David slung the stone at Go-li—”

Another silence. Encouraged, Sharley dried her tears and crept half-way across the floor. Then a board creaked.

“O Sharley! Why don’t people shut their eyes when they die? Why, Jim Snow’s dorg, he didn’t. I punched a frog yesterday. I want a drink of water.”

Sharley resigned herself in despair to her fate. Moppet lay broad and bright awake till half past eight. The voices by the door grew silent. Steps sounded on the walk. The gate shut.

“That child has kept me up with him the whole evening long,” said Sharley, coming sullenly down. “You didn’t even come and speak to him, mother. I suppose Halcombe Dike never asked for me?”

“Halcombe Dike! Law! that wasn’t Halcombe Dike. It was Deacon Snow,—the old Deacon,—come in to talk over the revival. Halcombe Dike was at meeting, your father says, with his cousin Sue. Great interest up his way, the Deacon says. There’s ten had convictions since Conference night. I wish you were one of the interested, Sharley.”

But Sharley had fled. Fled away into the windy, moonless night, down through the garden, out into the sloping field. She ran back and forth through the grass with great leaps, like a wounded thing. All her worry and waiting and disappointment, and he had not come! All the thrill and hope of her happy Sunday over and gone, and he had not come! All the winter to live without one look at him,—and he knew it, and he would not come!

“I don’t care!” sobbed Sharley, like a defiant child, but threw up her hands with the worlds and wailed. It frightened her to hear the sound of her own voice—such a pitiful, shrill voice—in the lonely place. She broke into her great leaps again, and so ran up and down the slope, and felt the wind in her face. It drank her breath away from her after a while; it was a keen, chilly wind. She sat down on a stone in the middle of the field, and it came over her that it was a cold, dark place to be in alone; and just then she heard her father calling her from the yard. So she stood up very slowly and walked back.