h a one, Diana."

"I?" said the girl, with a curious intonation; then subsiding again
immediately, she sat as she had sat at her own door a year ago, with
arms folded, gazing out upon the summery hill pasture where the cows
were leisurely feeding. But now her eyes had a steady, hard look, not
busy with the sunshiny turf or the deep blue sky against which the line
of the hill cut so soft and clear. _Then_ the vision had been all
outward.

"And that was his sermon?" said the old lady with a dash of
disappointment.

"No! O no," said Diana, rousing herself. "He went on then--how shall I
tell you? Do you remember a verse in the Revelation about the Church
coming down as a bride adorned for her husband?"

"Ay!" said the old lady with a gratified change of voice. "Well?"

"He went on to describe that adornment. I can't tell you how he did it;
I can't repeat what he said; but it was inner adornment, you know; 'all
glorious within,' I remember he said; and without a word more about
what he started with, he made one feel that there is no real adornment
but that kind, nor any other worth a thought. I heard Kate Boddington
telling mother, as we came out of church, that she felt as cheap as
dirt, with all her silk dress and new bonnet; and Mrs. Carpenter, who
was close by, said she felt there wasn't a bit of her that would bear
looking at."

"What did your mother say?"

"Nothing. She didn't understand it, she said."

"And, Di, how did you feel?"

"I don't think I felt anything, mother."

"How come that about?"

"I don't know. I believe it seems to me as if the fashion of this world
never passed away; it's the same thing, year in and year out."

"What ails you, Diana?" her old friend asked after a pause.

"Nothing. I'm sort o' tired. I don't see how folks stand it, to live a
long life."

"But life has not been very hard to you, honey."

"It needn't be _hard_ for that," Diana answered, with a kind of choke
in her voice. "Perhaps the hardest of all would be to go on an
unvarying jog-trot, and to know it would always be so all one's life."

"What makes life all of a sudden so tiresome to you, Di?"

"Something I haven't got, I suppose," said the girl drearily. "I have
enough to eat and drink."

"You ain't as bright as you used to be a year ago."

"I have grown older, and have got more experience."

"If life is good for nothin' else, Di, it's good to make ready for what
comes after."

"I don't believe that doct