The day was so warm she had put on, for the first time that spring, her pink muslin gown, which had served her for a matter of eight seasons, and showed in stripes of brighter color around the skirt where the tucks had been let out to accommodate her growth.

Her pink skirts fluttered around her as she sat there, smiling straight ahead out of the pink scoop of a sunbonnet like her dress, with a curious sweet directness, as if she saw some one whom she loved--as, indeed, she did.

Elmira, full of the innocent selfishness of youth, saw such a fair vision of her own self clad in her mother's wedding silk, with loving and approving eyes upon her, that she could but smile.
Elmira rested a few minutes, then gathered up her parcel and started again on her way.

She reached the place in the road where the brook willows border it on either side, and on the east side the brook, which is a river in earliest spring, flows with broken gurgles over a stony bed, and slackened her pace, thinking she would walk leisurely there, for the young willows screened the sun like green veils of gossamer, and the wind did not press her back so hard, and then she heard the trot, trot of a horse's feet behind her.
She did not look around, but walked more closely to the side of the road and the splendid east file of willows.

The trot, trot of the horse's feet came nearer and nearer, and finally paused alongside of her; then a man's voice, half timid, half gayly daring, called, "Good-day, Miss Elmira Edwards!" With that Elmira gave a great start, though not wholly of surprise; for the imagination of a maid can, at the stimulus of a horse's feet, encompass nearly all realities within her dreams.