uldn't learn from _them_, child. And folks
thinks I'm a lonesome old woman!"

"Well, how can they help it?" said Diana.

"It's nat'ral," said Mrs. Bartlett.

"I can't help your seeming so to me."

"That _ain't_ nat'ral, for you had ought to know better. They think,
folks does,--I know,--I'm a poor lone old woman, just going to die."

"But isn't that nearly true?" said Diana gently.

There was a slight glad smile on the withered lips as Mrs. Bartlett
turned towards her.

"You have the book there on your lap, dear. Just find the eleventh
chapter of the Gospel of John, and read the twenty-fifth and
twenty-sixth verses. And when you feel inclined to think that o' me
agin, just wait till you know what they mean."

Diana found and read:--

"'Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoesoever
liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.'"

CHAPTER V.

MAKING HAY.

June had changed for July; but no heats ever withered the green of the
Pleasant Valley hills, nor browned its pastures; and no droughts ever
stopped the tinkling of its rills and brooks, which rolled down, every
one of them, over gravelly pebbly beds to lose themselves in lake or
river. Sun enough to cure the hay and ripen the grain, they had; and
July was sweet with the perfume of hayfield, and lovely with brown
hayricks, and musical with the whetting of scythes. Mrs. Starling's
little farm had a good deal of grass land; and the haying was
proportionally a busy season. For haymakers, according to the general
tradition of the country, in common with reapers, are expected to eat
more than ordinary men, or men in ordinary employments; and to furnish
the meals for the day kept both Mrs. Starling and her daughter busy.

It was mid-afternoon, sunny, perfumed, still; the afternoon luncheon
had gone out to the men, who were cutting then in the meadow which
surrounded the house. Diana found her hands free; and had gone up to
her room, not to rest, for she was not tired, but to get out of the
atmosphere of the kitchen and breathe a few minutes without thinking of
cheese and gingerbread. She had begun to change her dress; but leisure
wooed her, and she took up a book and presently forgot even that care
in the delight of getting into a region of _thought_. For Diana's book
was not a novel; few such found their way to Pleasant Valley, and
seldom one to Mrs. Starling