WHAT DREAMS MAY COME"

SUPPER was over and the work done at last; the dishes washed, the beans
put in soak, the hens shut up for the night, the milk strained and
carried down cellar. Patty went up to her little room with the
one window and the slanting walls and Waitstill followed and said
good-night. Her father put out the lights, locked the doors, and came up
the creaking stairs. There was never any talk between the sisters before
going to bed, save on nights when their father was late at the store,
usually on Saturdays only, for the good talkers of the village, as well
as the gossips and loafers, preferred any other place to swap stories
than the bleak atmosphere provided by old Foxy at his place of business.

Patty could think in the dark; her healthy young body lying not
uncomfortably on the bed of corn husks, and the patchwork comforter
drawn up under her chin. She could think, but for the first time she
could not tell her thoughts to Waitstill. She had a secret; a dazzling
secret, just like Ellen Wilson and some of the other girls who were
several years older. Her afternoon's experience loomed as large in her
innocent mind as if it had been an elopement.

"I hope I'm not engaged to be married to him, EVEN IF HE DID--" The
sentence was too tremendous to be finished, even in thought. "I don't
think I can be; men must surely say something, and not take it for
granted you are in love with them and want to marry them. It is what
they say when they ask that I should like much better than being
married, when I'm only just past seventeen. I wish Mark was a little
different; I don't like his careless ways! He admires me, I can tell
one; that by the way he looks, but he admires himself just as much, and
expects me to do the same; still, I suppose none of them are perfect,
and girls have to forgive lots of little things when they are engaged.
Mother must have forgiven a good many things when she took father.
Anyway, Mark is going away for a month on business, so I shan't have
to make up my mind just yet!" Here sleep descended upon the slightly
puzzled, but on the whole delightfully complacent, little creature,
bringing her most alluring and untrustworthy dreams.

The dear innocent had, indeed, no need of haste! Young Mr. Marquis de
Lafayette Wilson, Mark for short, was not in the least a gay deceiver or
ruthless breaker of hearts, and, so far as known, no scalps of village
beauties were hung to his belt. He was a likable