Glory called her fancies so. They followed her still. She lived yet in an ideal world. The real world--that is, the best good of it--had not come close enough to her, even in this, her widely amended condition, to displace the other. Remember--this child of eighteen had missed her childhood; had known neither father nor mother, sister nor brother.
Don't think her simple, in the pitiful meaning of the word; but she still enacted, in the midst of her plain, daily life, wonderful dreams that nobody could have ever suspected; and here, in her solitary chamber, called up at will creatures of imagination who were to her what human creatures, alas! had never been. Above all, she had a sister here, to whom she told all her secrets. This sister's name was Leonora.
"No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung; Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence!" HEBER.
The thaw continued till the snow was nearly gone. Only the great drifts against the fences, and the white folds in the rifts of distant hillsides lingered to tell what had been. Then came a day of warm rain, that washed away the last fragment of earth's cast-off vesture, and bathed her pure for the new adornment that was to be laid upon her. At night, the weather cooled, and the rain changed to a fine, slow mist, congealing as it fell.
Faith stood next morning by a small round table in the sitting-room window, and leaned lovingly over her jonquils and hyacinths that were coming into bloom. Then, drawing the curtain cord to let in the first sunbeam that should slant from the south upon her bulbs, she gave a little cry of rapturous astonishment. It was a diamond morning!
Away off, up the lane, and over the meadows, every tree and bush was hung with twinkling gems that the slight wind swayed against each other with tiny crashes of faint music, and the sun was just touching with a level splendor.
After that first, quick cry, Faith stood mute with ecstasy.
"Mother!" said she, breathlessly, at last, as Mrs. Gartney entered, "look there! have you seen it? Just imagine what the woods must be this morning! How can we think of buckwheats?"
Sounds and odors betrayed that Mis' Battis and breakfast were in the little room adjoining.
