l was a master hand
for work, but she didn't keep things up a mite better than you--not so
good, to my notion. You're restfuller. Nell couldn't rest herself nor
let anybody else. Nell couldn't atouched them biscuit--fact!"

"I try to keep things up as much like Nell as I can. I'd ruther use
white table-cloths myself, but Nell always used the checkered. And my
own chiny set the folks gave me--but I know Mother'd feel strange
without her old white ones. There's lots of pretty chiny in the safe,
but Nell always used it so careful. I've never used a piece. And yet,
just adustin' that pink cup I had to go and drop it! I don't s'pose it
was ever drunk out of."

"What's the good," argued Marvin, "of having things too fine to use?"

"You and me, Marvin, think the same about them things. But Nell and
Mother--they're different."

"You're a good woman, Myry."

It pleased Myra to be told that she was good, and that her biscuits
surpassed those of the capable Nell. But such compliments, for all their
practicality and worth, sent no flush to her sallow cheek.

In her woman's magazine, which came to her monthly, lovers (and more
rarely, husbands) were always breathing into the heroine's ear, "I love
you. How beautiful you are!" or sentiments in that tenor. Marvin had not
told her he loved her. He had asked her seriously and respectfully to
marry him, when it became apparent that the efficient Nell was about to
wed. And he had never told her that she was beautiful. She could not
have believed him if he had.

Two days after the accident to the pink cup, the majolica pickle-dish
was found shattered in front of the safe, when Marvin came out to start
the kitchen fire. No one could account for its being there. The safe
doors were ajar, and they decided that the majolica dish must have got
pushed too near the edge of the shelf, and that a sudden jar had
dislodged it. The safe doors were never remembered to have been left
open before; the majolica dish had always sat well back; and nothing
more jarring than Marvin's step disturbed the habitual quiet of the
house. Still, how else account for it? "Mebbe Tom leaped up and done
it," suggested old Mrs. Bray. The sleepy Tom, a handsome Tiger-stripe,
sunk in bodily comfort, seemed to eye her reproachfully. He had not
leaped in years.

Old Mrs. Bray carried away with her the fragments of the majolica
pickle-dish and that afternoon, and other afternoons, she passed in the
solitary privacy o