All through the spring she offered her violets--violets gathered laboriously after school in the meadow back of her grandmother's house.

She used to skip from hillock to hillock of marsh grass with wary steps, lest she might slip and wet her feet in the meadow ooze and incur her mother's displeasure, for Fanny, in spite of her worship of the child, could speak with no uncertain voice.

She pulled up handfuls of the flowers, gleaming blue in the dark-green hollows.

Later she carried roses from the choice bush in the yard, and, later, pears from her grandmother's tree.

She used to watch for Miss Mitchell at her gate and run to meet her, and seize her hand and walk at her side, blushing with delight.