wrinkled fingers measured the
increase with a half circle in the air--"and the way she's plumped
out--not in one place, but all over--well, I tell ye, ye'd be
astonished! She knows it, too, bless her heart! I don't blame her. Let
her git all the comfort she kin when she's young--that's the time for
laughin'--the cryin' always comes later."

No part of Martha's rhapsody over Lucy described Jane. Not in her best
moments could she have been called beautiful--not even to-night when
Lucy's home-coming had given a glow to her cheeks and a lustre to her
eyes that nothing else had done for months. Her slender figure, almost
angular in its contour with its closely drawn lines about the hips and
back; her spare throat and neck, straight arms, thin wrists and
hands--transparent hands, though exquisitely wrought, as were those of
all her race--all so expressive of high breeding and refinement,
carried with them none of the illusions of beauty. The mould of the
head, moreover, even when softened by her smooth chestnut hair, worn
close to her ears and caught up in a coil behind, was too severe for
accepted standards, while her features wonderfully sympathetic as they
were, lacked the finer modeling demanded in perfect types of female
loveliness, the eyebrows being almost straight, the cheeks sunken, with
little shadows under the cheek-bones, and the lips narrow and often
drawn.

And yet with all these discrepancies and, to some minds, blemishes
there was a light in her deep gray eyes, a melody in her voice, a charm
in her manner, a sureness of her being exactly the sort of woman one
hoped she would be, a quick responsiveness to any confidence, all so
captivating and so satisfying that 'those who knew her forgot her
slight physical shortcomings and carried away only the remembrance of
one so much out of the common and of so distinguished a personality
that she became ever after the standard by which they judged all good
women.

There were times, too--especially whenever Lucy entered the room or her
name was mentioned--that there shone through Jane's eyes a certain
instantaneous kindling of the spirit which would irradiate her whole
being as a candle does a lantern--a light betokening not only
uncontrollable tenderness but unspeakable pride, dimmed now and then
when some word or act of her charge brought her face to face with the
weight of the responsibility resting upon her--a responsibility far
outweighing that which most mothers