"Why, you big, awkward
girl," cried Mrs. Barly, "whatever are you dreaming about?"
Anna thought to herself: "I was dreaming of a thousand things. But
when I went to look at them . . . there was nothing left."
"Nothing," she said aloud.
"Then," said her mother doubtfully, "you might help me shell peas."
The two women sat down together, a wooden bowl between them. The pods
split under their fingers, click, cluck; the peas fell into the bowl
like shot at first, dull as the bowl grew full. Click, cluck, click,
cluck . . . Anna began to dream again. "Oh, do wake up," said her
mother; "one would think . . ."
Anna's hands went startled into the peas. "I must be in love," she
said with half a smile.
Mrs. Barly sighed. "Ak," she said.
Anna began to laugh. After a while she asked, "Do you think I'm in
love?"
"Like as not," said her mother.
"Well, then," Anna cried, "I'm not in love at all--not now."
Mrs. Barly let her fingers rest idly along the rim of the bowl. "When
I was a girl . . ." she began.
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