The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

182 The Gates Ajar.
home and see to the oxen, and shambled awk
wardly away.
Clo told us this afternoon that he begged the
errand and the flowers from her. She says:
"'Bin thinks there never was anybody like you,
Mrs. Forceythe, and'Bin is n't the only one,
either." At which Mrs. Forceythe smiles
absently, thinking - I wonder of what.
Monday night.
I saw as funny and as pretty a bit of a
drama this afternoon as I have seen for a long
time.
Faith had been rolling out in the hot hay
ever since three o'clock, with one of the little
Blands, and when the shadows grew long they
came in with flushed cheeks and tumbled hair,
to rest and cool upon the door-steps. I was
sitting in the parlor, sewing energetically on
some sun-bonnets for some of Aunt Winifred's
people down town, -I found the heat to be
more bearable if I kept busy, - and could see,
unseen, all the little tableazx into which the
two children grouped themselves; a new one
every instant; in the shadow now, - now in a
quiver of golden glow; the wind tossing their
hair about, and their chatter chiming down the
hall like bells.