e arms, and the hair clinging loose and
moist to her bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmering
folds,--there were rose-buds on that muslin,--and look and long, hang it
up, and turn away. Why could there not be a little more rose-bud and
shimmer in people's lives! "Seems to me it's all calico!" cried Sharley.

Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody but a girl knows how
girls dream over their ribbons.

"He is coming!" whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to the
little bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the glass,--"He
is coming!"

Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon the
doorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace;
yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is,
or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair--brown, I
think--and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to
stroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten.

How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge!
Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o'clock whistle smote the
air, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound
over the barren outline.

Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and down
the slope, called after her:--

"Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you'd let the baby go too. Well, she
doesn't hear!"

I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be frank, she was rather
tired of that baby.

There was a foot-path through the brown and golden grass, and Sharley
ran over it, under the maple, which was dropping yellow leaves, and down
to the knot of trees which lined the farther walls. There was a nook
here--she knew just where--into which one might creep, tangled in with
the low-hanging green of apple and spruce, and wound about with
grape-vines. Stooping down, careful not to catch that barbe upon the
brambles, and careful not to soil so much as a sprig of the clean light
calico, Sharley hid herself in the shadow. She could see unseen now the
great puffs of purple smoke, the burning line of sandy bank, the
station, and the uphill road to the village. Oddly enough, some old
Scripture words--Sharley was not much in the habit of quoting
Scripture--came into her thoughts just as she had curled herself
comfortably up beside the wall, her watching face against the
grape-leaves: "But what went ye out for to see?" "What went ye out for