“No, little one, I will not take it,” he said, as he planed Slowly away; “the time was when I would have been very grateful to any one who would have given me a little money, a little help, a little power of gaining knowledge. But now, I have gone so far alone I may go on to the end. I don’t want it, little one.”

She did not seem pained at his refusal, but swung her foot to and fro, the little old wrinkled forehead more wrinkled up than ever.

“Why is it always so, Waldo, always so?” she said; “we long for things, and long for them, and pray for them; we would give all we have to come near to them, but we never reach them. Then at last, too late, just when we don’t want them any more, when all the sweetness is taken out of them, then they come. We don’t want them then,” she said folding her hands resignedly on her little apron. After awhile she added, “I remember once, very long ago when I was a very little girl, my mother had a work-box full of colored reels. I always wanted to play with them, but she would never let me. At last one day she said I might take the box. I was so glad I hardly knew what to do. I ran round the house, and sat down with it on the back steps. But when I opened the box all the cottons were taken out.”

She sat for awhile longer, till the Kaffir maid had finished churning, and was carrying the butter toward the house. Then Em prepared to slip off the table, but first she laid her little hand on Waldo’s. He stopped his planing and looked up.

“Gregory is going to the town to-morrow. He is going to give in our banns to the minister; we are going to be married in three weeks.”

Waldo lifted her very gently from the table. He did not congratulate her; perhaps he thought of the empty box, but he kissed her forehead gravely.

She walked away toward the house, but stopped when she had got half-way. “I will bring you a glass of butter-milk when it is cool,” she called out; and soon her clear voice came ringing out through the back windows as she sang the “Blue Water” to herself, and washed the butter.