bridge, and he rescued her!  He used to get angry though sometimes.  Dear, how he thrashed Sammie Jones for calling her a “little snip.”  Arthur was good, though, very good.  He used to sit in that very bench where she was sitting, and explain the Sunday-school lesson to her, and say such good things.  Her father had told her two or three years ago of Arthur’s decision to be a missionary.  He was going away off to Palestine.  “I wonder how he can do it,” she thought.  “He has his B.A. now, too, and he was always so clever.  He must be a hero.  I’m not good like that; I—­I don’t think I want to be so good.  Clarence isn’t as good as that.  But Clarence must be good.  His poetry shows it.  I wonder if Arthur will like Clarence?”

Mrs. Birch, with a pail of fresh milk on each arm, interrupted her reverie.

Beth enjoyed her walk home that night.  The moon had just risen, and the pale stars peeped through the patches of white cloud that to her fancy looked like the foot-prints of angels here and there on the path of the infinite.  As she neared home a sound of music thrilled her.  It was only an old familiar tune, but she stopped as if in a trance.  The touch seemed to fill her very soul.  It was so brave and yet so tender.  The music ceased; some sheep were bleating in the distance, the stars were growing brighter, and she went on toward home.

She was surprised as she crossed the yard to see a tall dark-haired stranger talking to her father in the parlor.  She was just passing the parlor door when he came toward her.

“Well, Beth, my old play-mate!”

“Arthur!”

They would have made a subject for an artist as they stood with clasped hands, the handsome dark-eyed man, the girl, in her white dress, her milk-pail on her arm, and her wondering grey eyes upturned to his.

“Why, Beth, you look at me as if I were a spectre.”

“But, Arthur, you’re so changed!  Why, you’re a man, now!” at which he laughed a merry laugh that echoed clear to the kitchen.

Beth joined her father and Arthur in the parlor, and they talked the old days over again before they retired to rest.  Beth took out her pale blue dress again before she went to sleep.  Yes, she would wear that to the Mayfair’s next day, and there were white moss roses at the dining-room window that would just match.  So thinking she laid it carefully away and slept her girl’s sleep that night.

CHAPTER II.

A DREAM OF LIFE.

It was late the next afternoon when Beth stood before the mirror fastening the moss roses in her belt.  Arthur had gone away with her father to see a friend, and would not return till well on in the evening.  Aunt Prudence gave her the customary warning about not staying late and Beth went off with a lighter heart than usual.  It was a delightful day.  The homes all looked so cheery, and the children were playing at the gates as she went down the street.  There was one her eye dwelt on more than the rest.  The pigeons were strutting on the sloping roof, the cat dozed in the window-sill, and the little fair-haired girls were swinging under the cherry-tree.  Yes, marriage and home must be sweet after all.  Beth had always said she never would marry.  She wanted to write stories and not have other cares.  But school girls change their views sometimes.