tion tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she
cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the
charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and
breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year
comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of
pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you
needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!"

People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations,
on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be
making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from
the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you
meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens
are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in
through sense and spirit.

Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never
would be afraid again in all her life; she _knew_ how things were
measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent
while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort
had been kept back."

She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke
should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit.
She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress,
now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to
accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries.

Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra
yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because
she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage
was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which
she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self.

"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for
quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had."

There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of
good plenishing that would last for years.

Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other
girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief"
since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck
and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their
hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately.

She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining
Desire's own. The white box la