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All the earth was gay.
Land and sea

Gave themselves up to jollity

And with the heart of May

Did every Beast keep holiday.

The Carey girls had never heard of "the joy of living" as a phrase, but oh! they knew a deal about it in these first two heavenly springs in little Beulah village! The sunrise was so wonderful; the trees and grass so marvellously green; the wild flowers so beautiful! Then the river on clear days, the glimpse of the sea from Beulah's hill tops, the walks in the pine woods,

could Paradise show anything to compare?

And how good the food tasted; and the books they read, how fresh, how moving, how glorious! Then when the happy day was over, sleep came without pause or effort the moment the flushed cheek touched the cool pillow.

"These," Nancy reflected, quoting from her favorite Wordsworth as she dressed beside her open window, "These must be

The gifts of morn,

Ere life grows noisy and slower-footed thought

Can overtake the rapture of the sense.

I was fifteen and a half last spring, and now, though it is only a year ago, everything is different!" she mused. "When did it get to be differ

ent, I wonder? It never was all at once, so it must have been a little every day, so little that I hardly noticed it until just now.'

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A young girl's heart is ever yearning for and trembling at the future. In its innocent depths the things that are to be are sometimes rustling and whispering secrets, and sometimes keeping an exquisite, haunting silence. In the midst of the mystery the solemn young creature is sighing to herself, "What am I meant for? Am I everything? Am I nothing? Must I wait till my future comes to me, or must I seek it?"

This was all like the sound of a still, small voice in Nancy's mind, but it meant that she was "growing up," taking hold on life at more points than before, seeing new visions, dreaming new dreams. Kathleen and Julia seemed ridiculously young to her. She longed to advise them, but her sense of humor luckily kept her silent. Gilbert appeared crude, raw; promising, but undeveloped; she hated to think how much experience he would have to pass through before he could see existence as it really was, and as she herself saw it. Olive's older view of things, her sad, strange outlook upon life, her dislike of anything in the shape of man, her melancholy aversion to her father, all this fascinated and puzzled Nancy, whose impetuous nature ran

out to every living thing, revelling in the very act of loving, so long as she did not meet rebuff.

Cyril perplexed her. Silent, unresponsive, shy, she would sometimes raise her eyes from her book in school and find him gazing steadily at her like a timid deer drinking thirstily at a spring. Nancy did not like Cyril, but she pitied him and was as friendly with him, in her offhand, boyish fashion, as she was with every

one.

The last days of the academy term were close at hand, and the air was full of graduation exercises and white muslin and ribbon sashes. June brought two surprises to the Yellow House. One morning Kathleen burst into Nancy's room with the news: "Nancy! The Fergusons offer to adopt Judy, and she does n't want to go. Think of that! But she's afraid to ask mother if she can stay. Let's us do it; shall we?"

"I will; but of course there is not enough money to go around, Kitty, even if we all succeed in our vacation plans. Julia will never have any pretty dresses if she stays with us, and she loves pretty dresses. Why did n't the Fergusons adopt her before mother had made her over?"

"Yes," chimed in Kathleen. "Then everybody would have been glad, but now we shall

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