Miles from any church, and miles from any railway station, stood, one summer afternoon, shut up and empty, an old gray house. It had been a handsome house, and there was something comely about it yet, with its fan-light over the broad door, its many windows, its quaint roof, and its fretted cornices. But it looked like a house fast asleep. All the year it had stood just so. Last summer the rose-tree had reached out far enough to tap with prickly fingers on the panes, as if to say, "Wake up and admire me: am I to bloom unseen?" Last autumn, the grape-vine had held waiting, until it was tired, the ripened bunches on its unpruned branches. Last winter the winds had shaken rudely the doors, and casements, and the storms had beat loudly enough to rouse any dreamer, one would think. But still the old house did not stir. A hornet's nest hung undisturbed over the front door. The lilacs and syringas, the wax-ball and snow-ball bushes, cowered closer and closer to the walls, and birds built in them fearlessly. All day the oriole, which, it is said, never sings except in beautiful places, spent there his gift of melody in songs half sad, half tender. At night the whip-poor-will took the oriole's place. Little wild things from the woods went fearlessly about at twilight. They seemed all to have agreed together: "Yes, there is no make-believe about it; the place is really sound asleep. We may do what we please."

It was a great surprise, then, when on that same summer afternoon the long slumber of the house broke up. Horses' feet stamped at the gate, voices laughing and exclaiming frightened the squirrels away, windows flew up, doors were forced noisily and unwillingly open. At night-fall lamps moved flickering past the windows up stairs and down, while a broad swath of golden light swept from the open hall door.

A group of people sitting just within the door chattered merrily. They were laughing at mamma about "her property." For this place had been left to mamma as a legacy by her granduncle, who died a year ago, and mamma had chosen for this summer to let the sea-side cottage, shut up the house in town, and spend the season here before deciding about selling the place or letting it.

"So here we all are," the tall son was saying, "settling down to enjoy mamma's property like lords. This tumble-down old house—"

"Be careful how you speak of my property," smiled his mother, shaking her finger at him, "or you may run some risk of being warned off it."

"Like the hornets," said the oldest daughter, archly.

"Oh dear! I think it would have been so much nicer at the sea-side!" sighed a child's voice, discontentedly, as a bat flew by her head, and each of the party was betrayed into a shriek more or less shrill, while her brother made wild passes in the air with his hat.

"Oh, well, mamma," spoke the father's genial voice, when they had settled back in their seats, "it will be only bats and hornets that will dispute your property with you, at all events. Humanity is too scarce hereabouts to trouble you. No house in sight except those distant chimneys, is there?"

"Yes, there is one, papa," replied the youngest, quickly; "it is behind the trees, under that hill; but I shouldn't have noticed it only that I saw a little girl in a pink dress moving about there."

"Come, now, Pussy; maybe you'll find a nice friend in little Pink—'a companion of my solitude,' eh?" suggested her father, carelessly. But Laura rather sniffed, and made a mournful remark about "Florence, Ethel, and the rest of the girls at the beach."

At that moment "little Pink" was sitting on the door-step of that same house "behind the trees, under the hill," and gazing up, full of excitement, toward the newly opened house on the knoll above her.

It was a great event, and great events happened very rarely to Pink. Once since she could remember she had been with her father and mother to pay a visit in the family of an aunt. They had taken the old horse and the green-bodied wagon, and had been a whole day in reaching their destination. Two or three times during every summer, also, they made a similar pilgrimage to attend the church where Pink's mother used to go when she was a girl and lived at "the village." Another great event was the shopping excursion that had to be made every season. While the father bought on one side of the store his seeds, or his new plough, or his axe-helve, the mother, on the other side, selected her calico, groceries, and even the ribbon that was to retrim last year's bonnet.

Pink's calico, chosen by herself this time, had been bought on the last of these expeditions. "I wouldn't say a word," she had pleaded, "if it cost any more than the brown, but they don't charge for the color, so mayn't I have the pink, please?"

And the pink calico had been bought, made, and worn to grace that other great event, the "examination day." For Pink, with a handful more of scholars, who lived about as far from the scorched-up little school-house as she did, walked her mile and a half every day during term-time, and wrestled with Webster's spelling-book, and Colburn's arithmetic, compositions, and "pieces," until the final grand display of the closing half-day. That was brass band and military procession to Pink. She held her head high, and went through her part with beating heart but machine-like precision. To have missed would have been unendurable mortification and misery.

But now all Pink's interest was centred in the changes that were taking place in the handsome old place adjoining her father's farm. The tall, gloomy fence in front was taken down, and the broad greensward, sloping to the road, carefully mowed. Where boughs were too dense they were pruned away. A gay striped awning appeared over the front door. Most interesting of all, some one was always to be seen moving about. It might be the motherly lady with gray hair and soft white lace upon it; it might be girls of different sizes, in dresses wonderful to Pink's country eyes; it might be only a workman making a flower bed. Altogether, Pink had never known so much excitement in her life as this.

Laura and her sisters used to notice how continually, when they were looking from their airy windows on the hill-top, the same rosy dot was to be seen, now flitting about, now resting quietly, and they often spoke of "little Pink," as they called her.

She took her piece of sewing as usual one morning out on the shady door-step, whence she could watch the great house. She saw Laura come listlessly out of the door and stroll off, as if she cared little where she went. Laura was "sick of everything," she had been declaring—sick of the country, sick of croquet, sick of all her books and trinkets. Her mother had reproved rather gravely the little girl's fretful discontent, and Laura, in no happy frame of mind, had chosen to roam off by herself.

She climbed a wall, followed a brook for a short distance, and then struck into a shady lane. Pink followed her with her eyes, reverently admiring the dainty white dress that shone in the sunshine. "I should like to have one dress as pretty as that," she thought; "but then I have my pink," she added, loyally, and turned back to her work as the gleam of white vanished from her sight.

It was not half a minute after that her quick ear caught a cry. She sprang up and listened. This time it was a louder one, and so full of terror that, without stopping to think, Pink ran toward the sound with all her might. She was swift-footed, and she minded little a tumble over the wall and a scramble through the blackberry bushes that could bring her by a short-cut into the lane. One sharp, loud whistle brought the great dog Shepherd to her side, and when Laura's third cry, hoarse and sobbing, escaped her lips, she saw the pink dress, as it seemed to her, flying through the air at her as though the wind blew it forward. "It's the ugly cow!—oh, it's the ugly cow!" panted Pink.

"Help! help!" cried Laura, faintly, as she ran on, wild with fright.

Pink seized her firmly, for the angry cow, tossing her horns sullenly, was plunging too near for escape. Using all her strength, she pushed Laura flat behind a great rock, the only shelter at hand, and quick as a flash had seized a stick and turned with Shepherd to face the cow.

Brave Shepherd was not afraid of anything; his little mistress had never been afraid either. They divided between them the honor of routing the enemy, and Pink hardly knew herself how it had been done, as she threw a stone after the clumsy heels of the beast that Shepherd still chased with angry barks, and then half lifted, half led Laura to the nearest stile. Laura herself, between the fright and the running, was quite exhausted, and could only get home with Pink's patient help.

When Laura had been laid on a lounge, and revived with camphor, she began eagerly to describe her adventure. She told of Pink's rescuing her in such words of praise that all the child could do was to stand still, her cheeks getting all the time more and more of a pink.

"Why, you brave, brave child!" cried Laura's mother, taking her hand, as Laura went on.

"Oh, you noble little Pink!" chorussed the girls, kissing her with enthusiasm.

"But my name is not Pink," said the child, trying to cover her hot cheeks; "my name is only Dolly Brown, and it wasn't me; it was Shep."

"Yes, it was you too, little Pink—I mean Dolly Brown," cried Laura, as willful as ever now that the faintness was gone; "and you shall be my best friend forever after—so there! and I shall write to Florence, and Ethel, and all the rest, and tell them so this very night. You're a perfect hero-wine, and you've saved my life, just like a book."

"There is no mistake about it, the name of Pink just fits her," said the older sisters to each other, "with her pink and white complexion, and her sweet, prim little mouth, and her dainty ways."

Laura took delight in conducting her new favorite all over the house and premises. Pink trod timidly on the soft rugs that half disguised the floors; caught her breath over the rose-bud chintzes covering easy-chairs and quaint couches, or falling as curtains; touched awe-struck the piano, the pictures, and trinkets. Laura was half pleased and half surprised to see her so impressed.

It was not until a rainy day came that Laura found time to show Pink her most personal possessions. Then she strewed her room with countless pretty things that she had herself packed—her box of ribbons, her pet books, some of last year's Christmas presents, her new locket, her box of paints, her ivory brushes, her painted fan, the souvenirs she brought from Cuba last winter, the long white feather for her summer hat, the needles which she used in doing her pretty fancy-work, their patterns and crewels.

"Oh, what a quantity of things!" cried Pink; "are they all yours?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Laura; "everything in this trunk is my own, very own property, and next time I come to your house I want you to show me yours."

When Pink went home she looked soberly round, and surveyed everything by a new standard. The little house was clean, but it was bare. It contained things to live with, that was all; none of the lovely useless things to which Laura had always been accustomed; none of the separate possessions in which she abounded. Pink could not think what she in her turn was to produce and show to Laura as her own property. By this time Laura knew all about the strawberry patch in which Pink gloried, because it was bearing this year for the first time; all about the flower garden alongside of it, where mignonette, hollyhock, cockscomb, and marigold were flourishing so brightly. She knew about the pine parlor up in the wood, where Pink loved to play by the hour, and the birch bower with moss cushions, where vines had been trained, and where Pink liked to learn her lessons, or read the Pilgrim's Progress. She knew where Pink found cresses by the brook, her favorite places for picking berries, and many of the spots where particular favorites among the wild flowers always waited for Pink to come and get them. But, after all, none of these places belonged, as her property, solely to Pink.

"And my tame robin died last fall," mused Pink, "and my lamb grew so large he had to be sold. But I know—oh, I do know, after all."

Pink clapped her hands softly; she had arrived at the answer to her question. She opened the corner cupboard, and took down the darling of her heart—an old sugar bowl, fat, low, and also appropriately pink.

"You dear old thing! I haven't looked at you for ever so long," said Pink.

Nobody knew, so Pink's mother said, how old this sugar bowl might be. It had been in the family when great-grandmother Brown was a little girl, and they called it old then. It had come down through the Aldens. Grandmother Brown was an Alden.

"It's no great for beauty," Mrs. Brown had said, when Pink was a little thing. "I'll give it to you, Dolly, and you may keep it for your own."

And Dolly had been ever since proud and happy to claim it. It had always been beautiful in her eyes from the very days of her babyhood, when, at rare intervals, her mother rewarded her for being a good girl with one of the square lumps of white sugar hoarded in its bulging sides.

"Yes, I know Laura will like to see this," remarked Pink, in a satisfied tone, "and I hope she'll come to-morrow."

Laura did come to-morrow; and when, with innocent glee, her friend paraded before her the old pink sugar bowl, which she dignified by the name of her "property," somehow a lump rose in the spoiled child's throat that kept her silent. Suddenly a vision of the countless costly things she herself owned rose up before her. She had been proud of them, perhaps, but never really grateful, as now she began to see. She had fretted at any imperfections in them, and complained in the midst of them if her will was disregarded, as, for instance, about coming into the country for this summer. She stood abashed before the little pink sugar bowl, and its owner with her happy, satisfied smile. She began for the first time to understand the wise things her mother often said to her lately about being contented with such as we have.

Pink was sure that Laura had been suitably impressed by the sugar bowl, and she felt entirely pleased with the effect it had produced upon her. It pleased her still more when, after a few days, Laura asked to borrow the sugar bowl to show to her mother.

When Laura had told the story of Pink's property it had touched the heart of the soft-hearted mother as well as the child herself, and she had said, "I should like to see the sugar bowl myself."

Laura's father looked it over carefully. "This could really be turned into property," he pronounced, "for it is a valuable ancient piece; and if your little friend would like to sell it, I can find a buyer for her."

At first Pink could not find it in her heart to sell the keepsake she had been so fond of; but mother Brown reasoned with her, and father Brown said, shrewdly, "Sugar's just as good to us out of any other bowl, Dolly; and with the money, don't you see, you can buy things you would have to go without, and maybe lay up a mite besides." So the sugar bowl never came back to its place in the corner cupboard, but, true-hearted as Dolly was, she really never missed it, for its place was more than filled.

Laura, her sisters, and her mother, having begun to love the sweet-natured, healthy Pink, pleased themselves with heaping up the cup that had thought itself quite full before. They were always finding a pretext for bestowing some fair and fit gift upon her. The skillful fingers of Laura's sisters even shaped for her a white dress like Laura's own, and they said that it was well worth while to take a little trouble for the sake of seeing real gratitude for once.

When the frosts came, Pink's friends returned to the city. But the marvels of that surprising season were not yet all told. The little house under the hill was closed, and Pink's father moved up into the homestead to take charge of everything there until summer should come again.

"I want Pink to have my room, and take care of it," Laura had said. And it was from the window of Laura's room, with Laura's books left in it for her use, Laura's canary chirping in its cage, and Laura's gifts about her, that Pink watched for the last wave of her friend's handkerchief as the carriage disappeared.

"The dear! Anyhow, she has more now than one old sugar bowl for property," said Laura, sinking back after the final glimpse of Pink's bright face.

"She is one of the people that are naturally rich," her mother added, "in having for her property a sunny, healthy content, and a happy, humble disposition. We shall all be glad to see her when she comes for her visit by-and-by. A spirit like hers brings its own welcome wherever it goes."