ur kingdom which you
were stolen away from.'

"So I mounted."

Here Eyebright put a pillow over the foot-board of the bed, and
climbed upon it, in the attitude of a lady on a side-saddle.

"Oh, how beautiful it is!" she murmured. "How fast we go! I do love
horseback."

Dear silly little Eyebright! Riding there in the moonlight, with her
scraps of ribbon and her bare feet and her night-gown, she was a
fantastic figure, and looked absurd enough to make any one laugh. I
laugh, too, and yet I love the little thing, and find it delightful
that she should be so easily amused and made happy with small fancies.
Imagination is like a sail, as Mr. Joyce had said that evening; but
sails are good and useful things sometimes, and carry their owners
over deep waters and dark waves, which else might dampen, and drench,
and drown.

[Illustration: EYEBRIGHT MAKING HERSELF FINE.]

CHAPTER IV.

A DAY WITH THE SHAKERS.

Three weeks after Mr. Joyce's visit, the long summer vacation
began. The children liked school, but none the less did they
rejoice over the coming of vacation. It brought a sense of
liberty, of long-days-all-their-own-to-do-as-they-liked-with,
which it was worth going to school the rest of the year to feel.
Each new morning was like a separate beautiful gift, brought and
laid in their hands by an invisible somebody, who must be kind
and a friend, since he continually did this delightful thing for
them.

One hot August afternoon, Eyebright and two or three of her special
cronies had gone for coolness to the ice-house, a place which they had
used as a playroom before on especially sultry days. It was a large,
square underground cave, with a shingled roof set over it, whose eaves
rested on the ground. The ice when first put in, filled all the space
under the roof, and it was necessary to climb up to reach the top
layer; later, ice and ground were on a level, but by August so much
ice had been used or had melted away, that a ladder was wanted to help
people down to the surface. The girls had left the door a little open,
but still the place was dark, and they could only dimly see the tin
chest in the corner where Wealthy kept her marketing, and the shapes
of two or three yellow crocks which lay half buried, their round lids
looking like the caps of droll little drowning Chinamen.

It was so hot outside, that the dullness of the ice was as refreshing
as very cold water is to people who have been walking in