"WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

SUPPER was over and the work done at last; the dishes washed, the
beans put in soak, the hens shut up for the night, the milk
strained and carried down cellar. Patty went up to her little
room with the one window and the slanting walls and Waitstill
followed and said good-night. Her father put out the lights,
locked the doors, and came up the creaking stairs. There was
never any talk between the sisters before going to bed, save on
nights when their father was late at the store, usually on
Saturdays only, for the good talkers of the village, as well as
the gossips and loafers, preferred any other place to swap
stories than the bleak atmosphere provided by old Foxy at his
place of business.

Patty could think in the dark; her healthy young body lying not
uncomfortably on the bed of corn husks, and the patchwork
comforter drawn up under her chin. She could think, but for the
first time she could not tell her thoughts to Waitstill. She had
a secret; a dazzling secret, just like Ellen Wilson and some of
the other girls who were several years older. Her afternoon's
experience loomed as large in her innocent mind as if it had been
an elopement.

"I hope I'm not engaged to be married to him, EVEN IF HE DID--"
The sentence was too tremendous to be finished, even in thought.
"I don't think I can be; men must surely say something, and not
take it for granted you are in love with them and want to marry
them. It is what they say when they ask that I should like much
better than being married, when I'm only just past seventeen. I