floor were of her own devising and
sewing together, and rivaled in color and ingenuity those of Bokhara.

But Patience was a student of the heavens as well as of the earth, and
it was upon the ceiling that her imagination expanded. There one could
see in their order the constellations of the heavens, represented by
paper-gilt stars, of all magnitudes, most wonderful to behold. This part
of her decorations was the most difficult of all. The constellations
were not made from any geography of the heavens, but from actual nightly
observation of the positions of the heavenly bodies. Patience confessed
that the getting exactly right of the Great Dipper had caused her most
trouble. On the night that was constructed she sat up till three o'clock
in the morning, going out and studying it and coming in and putting up
one star at a time. How could she reach the high ceiling? Oh, she took
a bean-pole, stuck the gilt star on the end of it, having paste on the
reverse side, and fixed it in its place. That was easy, only it was
difficult to remember when she came into the house the correct positions
of the stars in the heavens. What the astronomer and the botanist and
the naturalist would have said of this little kingdom is unknown, but
Patience herself lived among the glories of the heavens and the beauties
of the earth which she had created. Probably she may have had a humorous
conception of this, for she was not lacking in a sense of humor. The
stone step that led to her private door she had skillfully painted with
faint brown spots, so that when visitors made their exit from this part
of the house they would say, "Why, it rains!" but Patience would laugh
and say, "I guess it is over by now."

III

"I'm not going to follow you about any more through the brush and
brambles, Phil Burnett," and Celia, emerging from the thicket into a
clearing, flung herself down on a knoll under a beech-tree.

Celia was cross. They were out for a Saturday holiday on the hillside,
where Phil said there were oceans of raspberries and blueberries,
beginning to get ripe, and where you could hear the partridges drumming
in the woods, and see the squirrels.

"Why, I'm not a bit tired," said Phil; "a boy wouldn't be." And he threw
himself down on the green moss, with his heels in the air, much more
intent on the chatter of a gray squirrel in the tree above him than on
the complaints of his comrade.

"Why don't you go with a boy, then?" asked Celi