e and short enough to reveal a good deal of the
exquisitely-moulded arms, were edged with the same costly trimming,
throwing a creamy shadow on the white skin and giving it a tinge like
ivory.

Miss Custer liked being considered a brunette, and directed all the arts
of her toilette to the bringing out of that idea. She had not much to
commence with, however. Her eyes were brown, it is true, but they were a
sort of amber-brown, large and serene, with dusky, long-fringed lids
drooping over them; and her hair, which was dark in the shadow of the
veranda, all hemmed in with trees in thick foliage, was bright gold in
certain lights.

She was an amply-framed, finely-proportioned person, and rejoiced in her
physique, having a masculine pride in her breadth of shoulders and depth
of chest. But in all other respects she was exquisitely feminine: she
never displayed either strength or agility. Westbrook was a country
place, and in the young folks' rambles about town and out over the hills
she was more often fatigued than anybody else, and obliged to accept
support from some one of the gentlemen, all of whom were eager enough to
offer their services.

She had been in Westbrook only two weeks--she had come to rest herself
from the burdens of fashionable life--but she was already very much at
home with the place and the people. She was one of those persons who
immediately interest the whole neighborhood, and of whom people say,
"Have you met her? Have you been introduced to her?"

She was not an entire stranger: there were a good many people in
Westbrook who had known her parents years before, and who took her at
once upon the credit of her family.

Ruth looked tired and warm, I say, as she came up the path. It was after
four o'clock, and school was just out. She was the teacher of the
grammar department in the ugly red-brick school-house down at the other
end of the town, and she had had a tiresome walk through the heat.

Miss Custer dropped her work, some delicate embroidery, in her lap and
folded her white hands upon it, and smiled down at her. She liked Ruth,
and was glad to see her coming: the afternoon had been rather dull
because she was alone, and she was not constituted for solitude.

Doctor Ebling had said at the dinner-table that, with Ruth's
permission--at which Ruth blushed and said something rather saucy, for
her--he would read _The Spanish Gypsy_ to Miss Custer out in the shade.

"It is so confoundedly health