answered absently.

"Du, hey? Wall, I allays liked life. I never could git too much o'
that. I should like a soldier's life uncommon,--if I was a man."

Diana had finished peeling her eggs, and now began to wash a bunch of
green parsley which she had fetched from the garden, daintily dipping
it up and down in a bowl of spring-water.

"It was kind o' lively down to the post office," Miss Collins remarked
again, eyeing the beautiful half-bared arm and the whole figure, which
in its calm elegance was both imposing and irritating to her. Miss
Collins, indeed, had a very undefined sense of the beautiful; yet she
vaguely knew that nobody else in Pleasant Valley looked so or carried
herself so; no other woman's dress adorned her so, or was so set off by
the wearer; although Diana's present attire was a very simply-made
print gown, not even the stylish ladies of Elmfield produced an equal
effect with their French dresses. And was not Diana "Mis' Starling's
daughter?" And Diana seemed not to hear or care what she had to say!

"Everybody comes to the post office," she went on grimly; "you hev'
only to watch, and you see all the folks; and you know all that is
goin' on. An' that suits me 'xactly."

"But you had nothing to do with the post office," said Diana. "How
could you see everybody?"

"You keep your eyes open, and you'll see things, most places," said
Miss Collins. "La! I used to be in and out; why shouldn't I? And now
and then I'd say to Miss Gunn--'You're jest fagged out with standin'
upon your feet; you jes' go in there and sit down by the fire, and
don't let the pot bile over and put it out; and I'll see to the letters
and the folks.' And so she did, and so I did. It was as good as a play."

"How?" said Diana, feeling a vague pain at the thought of the post
office; that place where her hopes had died. Somehow there was a vague
dread in her heart also, without any reason.

"Wall--you git at folks' secrets--if they have any," Miss Collins
answered, suddenly checking her flow of words. Diana did not ask again;
the subject was disagreeable. She began to cut up her parsley deftly
with a sharp knife; and her handmaid stood and looked at her.

"Some folks thought, you know, at one time, that Mr. Masters was
courtin' Phemie Knowlton. I didn't let on, but la! I knowed it warn't
so. Why, there warn't never a letter come from her to him, nor went
from him to her."

"She was here herself," said Diana; "why should they wr