ed it the minute I read it. She let me copy
it for her, and make an illuminated initial with her water-colors. She
seems to have everything imaginable in that big roomy desk of hers. I
was glad of the chance to copy it, for I could learn it and I want to
keep it always."

"Please recite it for us," said Dr. Helen, and, the others all joining
in her request with words or looks, Alice repeated the beautiful lines
lovingly:

"Faint blue the distant hills before,
Yellow the harvest lands behind;
Wayfarers we upon the path
The thistledown goes out to find.

"On naked branch and empty nest,
The woodland's blended gold and red,
Dim glory lies which autumn shares
With faces of the newly dead.

"Tender this moment of the year
To eyes that seek and feet that roam;
It is the lifting of the latch,
A footstep on the flags of home.

"Now may the peace of withered grass
And goldenrod abide with you;
Abide with me--for what is death?
Pall of a leaf against the blue."

Feeling that a benediction had been pronounced, they all adjourned to
the porch, Dr. Harlow sitting down by Archie and chatting with him in a
friendly way about his own Andover experiences years before, while the
girls talked quietly with Bert, who had dropped his nonsense for the
time. Dr. Helen was sitting a little apart, but by and by Hannah slipped
over to her chair.

"I'm not so very clever about things," she said, "and I always like to
have them explained. So won't you tell me just what you meant by this
afternoon? You know we all promised to use the prescription again, if we
needed it."

"Yes," said Dr. Helen encouragingly, and waited.

"Well. You might have meant several things. You might just have meant
that we needed a change. We had been sitting about and wishing it was
cooler and talking nonsense and gossip--almost!--and we hadn't been
doing anything useful. Perhaps you wanted us to find out that we'd be
happier if we did something for some one else, even if it looked
disagreeable at first. I've always had that preached to me!"

"I didn't preach!" objected Dr. Helen.

"No, you prescribed. That's your way of preaching, though. You set us to
preaching to ourselves, and it's much more objectionable. I can shut my
ears when other people preach to me, but I can't get away from myself!
But I was wondering if, perhaps, besides all that, you didn't want us to
see how ch