During those effervescent moods of abandon which fairly intoxicated all those who saw Thurley under their spell—back in the Corners—she had always rushed down to the emporium and coaxed Dan away on a frolic—a picnic, if summer, or skating, if winter. They would sit, these two, on the porch of a deserted lake mansion dreaming dreams of a lyric quality with a sincerity which made both the boy and the girl the better for having dreamed them! Thurley would weave garlands of wild flowers—Dan gathering them—and she would come home to Betsey Pilrig, her cheeks like roses and her eyes like stars, singing a spring song and causing Betsy to lapse into Ali Baba’s favorite expression, “Land sakes and Mrs. Davis—Thurley, be you from another world?”
The joyous moods, these days, came very seldom. To some degree they happened when Ernestine told her that Hobart was pleased with her progress or when Polly Harris kissed her and said she was a little sister to the great; some faint imitation of them was experienced when Caleb took her motoring and told her his humorous troubles or when she went with Miss Clergy and Hobart to the first opera—“Rigoletto”—and saw with the grave, conceited eyes of youth herself outshining the present _Gilda_—herself standing with outstretched arms to acknowledge the applause. The wild joy was felt for half an instant when Collin Hedley said he would paint the infant before her début—there would be no fun at all in painting her when she was famous and unapproachable, waving engagement tablets at a mere artist.
Thurley came to realize clearly the difference in the inspiration of her joy—the joy which had been her solace during the gray, hungry days of childhood. In Birge’s Corners supreme mirth came from smell of new mown hay, with sunshine sparkling all about, or the summer breeze kissing the little curls at the delicious nape of her white, soft neck—it was generated by the discovery of the first violets or the exhilaration of a skating party with Dan, by some baby’s laughing face or Betsey’s pleased smile—and most of all by Dan’s ardor. Thurley told herself with almost shamed admission that her values had changed.
But if Thurley changed quickly during the winter, Miss Clergy stayed the same feeble, at times querulous, ghost lady, always willing for Thurley to go to places without her, trusting the girl as one would trust a matron, content, now that she had roused from her neurotic lethargy, to lapse into a semi-doze with a vigilant eye for only two things—to have Thurley succeed as a _spinster_ and to have no one become personally acquainted with her own withered self lest memories be unearthed over which she mourned in vain.