earned all that
could be taught her at the school, she left the younger children
there and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing course
to a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate.

This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemorially
dwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived,
abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking the
track of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing.
For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessened
around them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, as
into the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean,
thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless mother
which never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower at
last--shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled and
morally sublime. When the top decays, as it always does in the
lapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below?
It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of high
destinies.

In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning and
the mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken to
the core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which she
was to journey to-morrow.

At ten o'clock next morning she set out.

It had been a question with her whether she should go straight
across the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by the
turnpike and open the gates. Her preference was for fields and
fences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy was
used to the short and direct way of getting to the end of her
desires. But, as has been said, she had already fallen into the
habit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as a
young Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would not
climb field fences, at least by preference and with facility.
Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity.

It could scarcely be said that she was becomingly raimented. Pansy
made her own dresses, and the dresses declared the handiwork of
their maker. The one she wore this morning was chiefly
characterized by a pair of sleeves designed by herself; from the
elbow to the wrist there hung green pouches that looked like long
pea-pods not well filled. Her only ornament was a large oval pin
at her throat which had somewhat the relation to a cameo as that
borne by Wedgwood china. It