She leaned her cheek against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields a bird was calling.

Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her as if the blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future.
She was ill, poor, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable certainty of it.

It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden field of heaven.
She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted.
Mrs.Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety when she saw her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually misplace the air.
Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.
"Don't shut the window, mother," said Lois.
"I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child." "No, I sha'n't, either.

I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother." Mrs.Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.
"Goin' to meetin', mother ?" Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.
"I thought mebbe I would." "I guess I won't go.

I want to sew some on my dress this evenin'." "Sha'n't you mind stayin' alone, if I go ?" "Mind stayin' alone?
of course I sha'n't.