Mother sighed; Missy couldn't know she was lamenting the loss of her sweet, shy, old-fashioned little girl. But when she spoke next her accents were firm.
“Now you go and take that horse home. But come straight back and get to bed so you can get an early start at your practicing in the morning. Right here I'm going to put my foot down. It isn't because I want to be harsh—but you never seem to know when to stop a thing. It's all well and good to be fond of dumb animals, but when it comes to a point where you can think of nothing else—”
The outstanding import of the terrific and unjust tirade was that Missy should not go near the sanitarium or the pony for a week.
When mother “put her foot down” like that, hope was gone, indeed. And a whole week! That was a long, long time when hope is deferred—especially when one is fifteen and all days are long. At first Missy didn't see how she was ever to live through the endless period, but, strangely enough, the dragging days brought to her a change of mood. It is odd how the colour of our mood, so to speak, can utterly change; how one day we can desire one kind of thing acutely and then, the very next day, crave something quite different.
One morning Missy awoke to a dawn of mildest sifted light and bediamonded dew upon the grass; soft plumes of silver, through the mist, seemed to trim the vines of the summerhouse and made her catch her breath in ecstasy. All of a sudden she wanted nothing so much as to get a book and steal off alone somewhere. The right kind of a book, of course—something sort of strange and sad that would make your strange, sad feelings mount up and up inside you till you could almost die of your beautiful sorrow.
As soon as her routine of duties was finished she gained permission to go to the Library. As she walked slowly, musingly, down Maple Avenue, her emotions were fallow ground for every touch of Nature: the slick greensward of all the lawns, glistening under the torrid azure of the great arched sky, made walking along the shady sidewalk inexpressibly sweet; the many-hued flowers in all the flowerbeds seemed to sing out their vying colours; the strong hard wind passed almost visible fingers through the thick, rustling mane of the trees. Oh, she hoped she would find the right kind of book!
Mother, back on the porch, looked up from her sewing to watch the disappearing figure, and smiled.
“We have our little girl back again,” she observed to Aunt Nettie.
“I wish that O'Neill girl'd move away,” Aunt Nettie said. “Missy's a regular chameleon.”
It's a pity Missy couldn't hear her new classification; it would have interested her tremendously; she was always interested in the perplexing vagaries of her own nature. However, at the Library, she was quite happy: for she found two books, each the right kind, though different. One was called “Famous Heroines of Medieval Legend.” They all had names of strange beauty and splendour—Guinevere—Elaine—Vivien—names which softly rustled in syllables of silken brocade. The other book was no less satisfying. It was a book of poems—wonderful poems, by a man named Swinburne—lilting, haunting things of beauty which washed through her soul like the waves of a sun-bejewelled sea. She read the choicest verses over and over till she knew them by heart: