With summer came a cessation of school, Loyal Legion, and sewing school duties; but the Poor took no vacation and gave none. Nevertheless, Patience had far more leisure, and borrowed many books from the town library. She read much of Hugo and Balzac and Goethe, and in the new intellectual delight forgot herself more completely than in her work.

Moreover, the town was very beautiful in summer, and she spent many hours rambling along the shadowy streets whose venerable trees shut the sunlight from the narrow side ways. The gardens too were full of trees; and the town from a distance looked like a densely wooded hillside, a riot of green, out of which housetops showed like eggs in a nest. Over some of the steep old streets the maples met, growing denser and denser down in the perspective, until closed by the flash of water.

The woods on the slope of the Hudson were thick with great trees dropping a leafy curtain before the brilliant river, and full of isolated nooks where a girl could read and dream, unsuspected of the chance pedestrian.

After one long drowsy afternoon by a brook in a hollow of the woods, Patience returned home to find a carriage standing before the door. It was a turnout of extreme elegance. The grey horses were thoroughbreds; a coachman in livery sat on the box; a footman stood on the sidewalk. She looked in wonder. Miss Tremont had no time for the fine people of Mariaville, and they had ceased to call on her long since. Moreover, Patience knew every carriage in the town, and this was not of them.

She went rapidly into the house, youthfully eager for a new experience. Miss Tremont was seated on the sofa in the front parlour, holding the hand of a tall handsomely gowned woman. Patience thought, as she stood for a moment unobserved, that she had never seen so cold a face. It was the face of a woman of fifty, oval and almost regular. The mouth was a straight line. The clear pale eyes looked like the reflection of the blue atmosphere on icicles. The skin was as smooth as a girl’s, the brown hair parted and waved, the tall figure slender and superbly carried. She was smiling and patting Miss Tremont’s hand, but there was little light in her eyes.

As Patience entered, she turned her head and regarded her without surprise; she had evidently heard of her. Miss Tremont’s face illumined, and she held out her hand.

“This is Patience,” she said triumphantly. “I haven’t told you half about the dear child. Patience, this is my cousin, Mrs. Gardiner Peele.”

Mrs. Gardiner Peele bent her head patronisingly, and Patience hated her violently.

“I am glad you have a companion,” said the lady, coldly. “But how is it you haven’t the white ribbon on her?”

Miss Tremont blushed. “Oh, I can’t control Patience in all things,” she said, in half angry deprecation. “She just won’t wear the ribbon.”

Mrs. Peele smiled upon Patience for the first time. It was a wintry light, but it bespoke approval. “I wish she could make you take it off,” she said to her relative. “That dreadful, dreadful badge. How can you wear it?—you—”

“Now, cousin,” said Miss Tremont, laughing good-naturedly, “we won’t go over all that again. You know I’m a hopeless crank. All I can do is to pray for you.”

“Thank you. I don’t doubt I need it, although I attend church quite as regularly as you could wish.”

“I know you are good,” said Miss Tremont, with enthusiasm, “and of course I don’t expect everybody to be as interested in Temperance as I am. But I do wish you loved the world less and the Lord more.”

Mrs. Peele gave a low, well modulated laugh. “Now, Harriet, I want you to be worldly for a few minutes. I have brought you back two new gowns from Paris, and I want you, when you come to visit me next week, to wear them. I have had them trimmed with white ribbon bows so that no one will notice one more or less—”

“I’m not ashamed of my white ribbon,” flashed out Miss Tremont, then relented. “You dear good Honora. Yes, I’ll wear them if they’re not too fashionable.”

“Oh, I studied your style. And let me tell you, Harriet Tremont, that fashionable gowns are what you should be wearing. It does provoke me so to see you—”

But Miss Tremont leaned over and kissed her short. “Now what’s the use of talking to an old crank like me? I’m a humble servant of my dear Lord, and I couldn’t be anything else if I had a million. But you dear thing, I’m so glad to see you once more. You do look so well. Tell me all about the children.”

Patience, quite forgotten, listened to the conversation with deep interest. There was a vague promise of variety in this new advent. As she watched the woman, who seemed to have brought with her something of the atmosphere of all that splendid existence of which she had longingly read, she was stirred with a certain dissatisfaction: some dormant chord was struck—as on the day she drove by Del Monte. When Mrs. Peele arose to go, she thought that not Balzac himself had ever looked upon a more elegant woman. Even Patience’s untrained eye recognised that those long simple folds, those so quiet textures, were of French woof and make. And the woman’s carriage was like unto that of the fictional queen. She nodded carelessly to Patience, and swept out. When Miss Tremont returned after watching her guest drive away, Patience pounced upon her.

“Who is she?” she demanded. “And why didn’t you tell me you had such a swell for a cousin?”

“Did I never tell you?” asked Miss Tremont, wonderingly. “Why, I was sure I had often talked of Honora. But I’m so busy I suppose I forgot.”

She sat down and fanned herself, smiling. “Honora Tremont is my first cousin. We used to be great friends until she married a rich man and became so dreadfully fashionable. The Lord be praised, she has always loved me; but she lives a great deal abroad, and spends her winters, when she is here, in New York. They have a beautiful place on the Hudson, Peele Manor, that has been in the family for nearly three hundred years. Mr. Peele is an eminent lawyer. I don’t know him very well. He doesn’t talk much; I suppose he has to talk so much in Court. I’ve not seen the children for a year. I always thought them pretty badly spoiled, particularly Beverly. May isn’t very bright. But I always liked Hal—short for Harriet, after me—better than any of them. She is about nineteen now. May is eighteen and Beverly twenty-four.

“Then there is Honora, cousin Honora’s sister Mary’s child, and the tallest woman I ever saw. Her parents died when she was a little thing and left her without a dollar. Honora took her, and has treated her like her own children. Sometimes I think she is very much under her influence. I don’t know why, but I never liked her. She is Beverly’s age. Oh!” she burst out, “just think! I have got to go to Peele Manor for a week. I promised. I couldn’t help it. And oh, I do dread it. They are all so different, and they don’t sympathise with my work. Much as I love them I’m always glad to get away. Wasn’t it kind and good of her to bring me two dresses from Paris?”

Patience shrewdly interpreted the prompting of Mrs. Peele’s generosity, but made no comment.

Miss Tremont drew a great sigh: “My temperance work—my poor—what will they do without me? Maria Twist gets so mad when I don’t read the Bible to her twice a week. Patience, you will have to stay in Temperance Hall. I shouldn’t like to think of you here alone. I do wish Honora had asked you too—”

“I wouldn’t go for worlds. When do you think your dresses will come? I do so want to see a real Paris dress.”

“She said they’d come to-morrow. Oh, to think of wearing stiff tight things. Well, if they are uncomfortable or too stylish I just won’t wear them, that’s all.”

“You just will, auntie dear. You’ll not look any less fine than those people, or I’ll not go near Hog Heights.”

Miss Tremont kissed her, grateful for the fondness displayed. “Well, well, we’ll see,” she said.

But the next day, when the two handsome black gowns lay on the bed of the spare room, she shook her head with flashing eyes.

“I won’t wear those things,” she cried. “Why, they were made for a society woman, not for an humble follower of the Lord. I should be miserable in them.”

Patience, who had been hovering over the gowns,—one of silk grenadine trimmed with long loops of black and white ribbon, the other of satin with a soft knot of white ribbon on the shoulder and another at the back of the high collar,—came forward and firmly divested Miss Tremont of her alpaca. She lifted the heavy satin gown with reverent hands and slipped it over Miss Tremont’s head, then hooked it with deft fingers.

“There!” she exclaimed. “You look like a swell at last. Just what you ought to look like.”

Miss Tremont glanced at the mirror with a brief spasm of youthful vanity. The rich fashionable gown became her long slender figure, her unconscious pride of carriage, far better than did her old alpaca and merino frocks. But she shook her head immediately, her eyes flashing under a quick frown.

“The idea of perching a white bow like a butterfly on my shoulder and another at the back of my neck, as if I had a scar. It’s an insult to the white ribbon. And this collar would choke me. I can’t breathe. Take it off! Take it off!”

“Not until I have admired you some more. You look just grand. If the collar is too high, I’ll send for Mrs. Best, and we’ll cut it off and sew some soft black stuff in the neck—although I just hate to. Auntie dear, don’t you think you could stand it?”

Miss Tremont shook her head with decision. “I couldn’t. It hurts my old throat. And how could I ever bend my head to get at my soup? And these bows make me feel actually cross. If the dress can be made comfortable I’ll wear it, for I’ve no right to disgrace Honora, nor would I hurt her feelings by scorning her gowns; but I’ll not stand any such mockery as these flaunting white things.”

Patience exchanged the satin for the grenadine gown. This met with more tolerance at first, as the throat was finished with soft folds, and the white ribbon was less demonstrative.

“It floats so,” said Patience, ecstatically. “Oh, auntie, you are a beauty.”

“I a beauty with my ugly scowling old face? But this thing is like a ball dress, Patience—this thin stuff! I prefer the satin.”

“You will wear this on the hot evenings. All thin things are not made for the ball-room. You needn’t look at yourself like that. I only wish I’d ever be half as pretty. Auntie, why didn’t you ever marry?”

Miss Tremont’s face worked after all the years. Memories could not die in so uniform a nature.

“My youth was very sad,” she said, turning away abruptly. “I only talk about it with the dear Lord.” And Patience asked no more questions.