and milked one cow and dressed four boys that
morning, and she felt as if she had earned the right to dance in a haze
of anything. The sunlight quivered in through the blinds. The leaves of
the yellow maple drifted by on the fresh, strong wind. The church-bells
rang out like gold. All the world was happy.

"Charlotte!" Her mother bustled out of the "keeping-room" with her hat
on. "I've changed my mind, Sharley, and feel so much better I believe I
will go to church. I'll take Methuselah, but Nate and Moppet had better
stay at home with the baby. The last time I took Moppet he fired three
hymn-books at old Mrs. Perkins,--right into the crown of her bonnet, and
in the long prayer, too. That child will be the death of me some day. I
guess you'll get along with him, and the baby isn't quite as cross as he
was yesterday. You'd just as lief go in the afternoon, I suppose? Pin
my shawl on the shoulder, please."

But Sharley, half-way down the stairs, stood still. She was no saint,
this disappointed little girl. Her face, in the new fall hat, flushed
angrily and her hands dropped.

"O mother! I did want to go! You're always keeping me at home for
something. I did _want_ to go!"--and rushed up stairs noisily, like a
child, and slammed her door.

"Dear me!" said her mother, putting on her spectacles to look after
her,--"dear me! what a temper! I'm sure I don't see what difference it
makes to her which half of the day she goes. Last Sunday she must go in
the afternoon, and wouldn't hear of anything else. Well, there's no
accounting for girls! Come, Methuselah."

_Is_ there not any "accounting for girls," my dear madam? What is the
matter with those mothers, that they cannot see? Just as if it never
made any difference to them which half of the day they went to church!
Well, well! we are doing it, all of us, as fast as we can,--going the
way of all the earth, digging little graves for our young sympathies,
one by one, covering them up close. It grows so long since golden
mornings and pretty new bonnets and the sweet consciousness of watching
eyes bounded life for us! We have dreamed our dreams; we have learned
the long lesson of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows. Our
eyes see that ye see not; our ears hear that which ye have not
considered. We read your melodious story through, but we have read other
stories since, and only its _haec fabula docet_ remains very fresh. You
will be as obtuse as we are some day, young