"Why don't he shave himself then, like other folks?"
"Why, mother, it is just the fashion in the army to wear a moustache."
"What business has he to be in the army? He ought to be here helping his grandfather. I have no sort o' patience with him."
"Mother, you know they sent him to the Military Academy; of course he could not help being in the army. It is no fault of his."
"He could quit it, I suppose, if he wanted to. But he ain't that sort. He just likes to wear gold on his shoulders, and a stripe down his leg, and fancy buttons, and go with his coat flying all open to show his white shirt. I think, when folks have a pair of such broad shoulders, they're meant to do some work; but he'll never do none. He'll please himself, and hold himself up high over them that does work. And he'll live to die poor. I. won't have you take after such a fellow, Diana; mind, I won't. I won't have you settin' yourself up above your mother and despisin' the ways you was brought up to. And I want you to be mistress o' Will Flandin's house and lands and money; and you can, if you're a mind to."
Diana was a little uncertain between laughing and crying, and thought best not to trust her voice. So they went up to their rooms and separated for the night. But all inclination to tears was shut out with the shutting of her door. Was not the moonlight streaming full and broad over all the fields, filling the whole world with quiet radiance? So came down the clear, quiet illumination of her happiness upon all Diana's soul. There was no disturbance; there was no shadow; there was no wavering of that full flood of still ecstasy. All things not in harmony with it were hidden by it. That's the way with moonlight.
And the daylight was sweeter. Early, Diana always saw it; in those prime hours of day when strength, and freshness, and promise, and bright hope are the speech and the eye-glance of nature. How much help the people lose who lose all that! When the sun's first look at the mountains breaks into a smile; when morning softly draws off the veil from the work there is to do; when the stir of the breeze speaks courage or breathes kisses of sympathy; and the clear blue sky seems waiting for the rounded and perfected day to finish its hours, now just beginning. Diana often saw it so; she did not often stop so long at her window to look and listen as she did this morning. It was a clear, calm, crisp morning, without a touch of frost, promising one of those mellow, golden, delicious days of September that are the very ripeness of the year; just yet six o'clock held only the promise of it. Like her life! But the daylight brought all the vigour of reality; and last night was moonshine. Diana sat at her window a few minutes drinking it all in, and then went to her dairy.
Alas! one's head may be in rare ether, and one's feet find bad walking spots at the same time. It was Diana's experience at breakfast.
"How are those pigs getting along, Josiah?" Mrs. Starling demanded.
"Wall, I don' know," was the somewhat unsatisfactory response. "Guess likely the little one's gettin' ahead lately."