The pines did it. Did you bring home any needles? On Monday, mother
will give one of her whist-parties. I shall add a dozen or two of our
set; you will come.

"P.S. What do you think of Mr. Harry Lothrop? Good young man, eh?"

I was glad that Laura had shut herself up for a few days; I dreaded to
see her just now. I suffered from an inexplicable feeling of pride and
disappointment, and did not care to have her discover it. Laura, like
myself, sometimes chose to protect herself against neighborly
invasions. We never kept our doors locked in the country; the sending
in of a card was an unknown process there. Our acquaintances walked in
upon us whenever the whim took them, and it now and then happened to be
an inconvenience to us who loved an occasional fit of solitude. I
determined to keep in-doors for a few days also. Whenever I was in an
unquiet mood, I took to industry; so that day I set about arranging my
drawers, making over my ribbons, and turning my room upside down. I
rehung all my pictures, and moved my bottles and boxes. Then I mended
my stockings, and marked my clothes, which was not a necessary piece of
work, as I never left home. I next attacked the parlor,--washed all the
vases, changed the places of the furniture, and distressed my mother
very much. When evening came, I brushed my hair a good deal, and looked
at my hands, and went to bed early. I could not read then, though I
often took books from the shelves, and I would not think.

Sunday came round. The church-bells made me lonesome. I looked out of
the window many times that day, and, fixing on the sash one of my
father's ship-glasses, swept the sea, and peered at the islands on the
other side of the bay, gazing through their openings, beyond which I
could see the great dim ocean. Mother came home from church, and said