hemselves where they
are not wanted must take what they get!"

"What did you say, Dorothy?"

"I say I didn't want thee then. I do not want thee now! Thee may go
back to thy fiddling and dancing! I'd rather have one of those dumb
brutes for company to-night than thee, Walter Evesham!"

"Very well! The reel has begun," said Evesham. "Fanny Jordan is waiting
to dance it with me, or if she isn't she ought to be! Shall I open the
gate for you?"

She passed out in silence, and the gate swung to with a heavy jar. She
made good speed down the lane, and then waited outside the fence till
her breath came more quietly.

"Is that thee, Dorothy?" Rachel's voice called from the porch. She came
out to meet her, and they went along the walk together. "How damp thy
forehead is, child! is the night so warm?" They sat down on the low
steps, and Dorothy slid her arm under her mother's and laid her soft
palm against the one less soft by twenty years of toil for others.
"Thee's not been long, dear; was it as much as thee expected?"

"Mother, it was dreadful! I never wish to hear a fiddle again as long
as I live!"

Rachel opened the way for Dorothy to speak further; she was not without
some mild stirrings of curiosity on the subject herself; but Dorothy
had no more to say.

They went into the house soon after, and as they separated for the
night, Dorothy clung to her mother with a little nervous laugh.

"Mother, what is that text about Ephraim?"

"Ephraim is joined to idols?" Rachel suggested.

"Yes! Ephraim is joined to his idols!" said Dorothy, lifting her head.
"Let him go!"

"Let him _alone_," corrected Rachel.

"Let him _alone!_" Dorothy repeated. "That is better yet."

"What's thee thinking of, dear?"

"Oh, I'm thinking about the dance in the barn."

"I'm glad thee looks at it in that light," said Rachel.

* * * * *

Dorothy knelt by her bed in the low chamber under the eaves, crying to
herself that she was not the child of her mother any more.

She felt she had lost something, which, in truth, had never been hers.
It was only the unconscious poise of her unawakened girlhood which had
been stirred. She had mistaken it for that abiding peace which is not
lost or won in a day.

Dorothy could not stifle the spring thrills in her blood any more than
she could crush its color out of her cheek or brush the ripples out of
her bright hair, but she longed for the cool grays and the s