Peacefully and pleasantly one day slipped after another.

Some thirty of them had joined their unnumbered fellows and to-morrow bade fair to pass serenely as yesterday.

"This, dear Queen," Katie confided to the dog stretched at her feet, "is what in vulgar parlance is known as 'nothing doing,' and in poetic language is termed the 'simple life.'" Thirty days of "nothing doing"-- and yet there had been more "doing" in those days than in all the thousands of their predecessors gaily crowded to the brim.

Those crowded days seemed days of a long sleep; these quiet ones, days of waking.
Ann was out on the links that afternoon with Captain Prescott.

From her place on the porch Katie had a glimpse of them at that moment.
Ann's white dress with its big knot of red ribbon was a vivid and a pleasing spot.