Jean regarded her gravely, with a faraway look in her eyes; evidently her thoughts were elsewhere. Unconsciously to herself she began to sing softly:
“I shall rise again at morning’s dawn, I shall put on glory then.”
“What on earth!” began Florence, wheeling about to stare at her. Jean laughed shamefacedly.
“Evidently you don’t think my selection fits the occasion,” she said. “It was your ‘glorified’ dress that did it. That is a song we are to sing next week at vespers; it is a very catchy tune; I find myself humming it half the time.” Whereupon she sang again:
“I’m travelling toward life’s sunset gate, I’m a pilgrim going home.”
“To be sure, you are a pilgrim going away from home,” she broke off to say, “but you have ‘put on glory’ all the same. You look too lovely for anything, as Florry Mitchell is always saying. Aunt Elsie ought to give you that lace; it just fits you. How queer for her to have such a costly cobweb as that! I wonder how it feels to be near that other home?” She was humming again:
“For the glow of eventide I wait, I’m a pilgrim going home.”
“How dreadfully you mix things!” Florence shivered a little as she spoke.
“Well,” said Jean, with a graver face than one often saw her wear, “things are dreadfully mixed in this life. You know that Helen Darroll who stayed to dinner here the night it rained so hard? She has been planning for more than a week for that dancing party to-night at Dr. Willard’s; couldn’t think or talk of anything else; and just before school closed to-day she had a telegram that her father had been thrown from his horse and killed.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” said Florence.