he purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough
Drops its bright spoil like arrow heads of gold."

I remember looking at her rapt face as she repeated the words, and
seeing the sunlight catch in her hair.

In some ways the Anthy, the real Anthy, of those days was only half
awake. It is your unimaginative girl who sees in every dusty swain the
possible hero of her heart; but she whose eyes are dazzled by the
shining armour of a knight-o'-dreams comes reluctantly awake. It is so
with some of the finest women: they step lightly through the years, with
untouched hearts. There was a great deal of her father in Anthy, a great
deal of the old New Englander, treasuring the best jealousy inside.

I think sometimes that women are far better natural executives and
organizers than men. To keep a great household running smoothly,
provisioned, cleaned, made sweet and cheerful always, and to do it
incidentally as it were, with a hundred other activities filling her
thoughts, is an accomplishment not sufficiently appreciated in this
world. Anthy, like the true women of her race, had this capacity highly
developed. She had a real genius for orderliness, which is the sanity,
if not the religion, of everyday life.

"I will say this for Anthy Doane," old Mrs. Parker was accustomed to
remark, "she is turrible particular."

How often have we been astonished to see gentlewomen (I like the good
old word) torn from the harbour of sheltered lives and serenely
navigating their ships on the stormiest seas, but without real cause for
our astonishment, for they have merely applied in a wider field that
genius for command and organization which they have long cultivated in
their households. We may yet come to look upon many of the functions of
government as only a larger kind of housekeeping, and find that we
cannot afford to dispense longer with the executive genius of women in
all those activities which deal with the comforts of human kind. (It's
true, Harriet.)

Mrs. Parker, as I have said, having something on her mind, was in
condition of unstable equilibrium.

"When you was little, Anthy," she began finally, "I used to tell you to
put on your rubbers when you went out in the rain, and to take your
umbrella to school, and not forget your 'rithmetic. Didn't I, Anthy?"

"Why, yes, Margaret." Anthy was much mystified.

Old Mrs. Parker paused: "Well, I don't approve of this Norton Carr."

Anthy laughed. "Why, what's the matter with Norton Ca