ther at the time of his birth. She had never left the home since. With a
faithfulness and devotion only to be accounted for by the existence of
rare springs of each in her own nature, surely not by any uncommon
lovableness in either Mr. or Mrs. White, or by any especial comforts in
her situation, she had stayed on a quarter of a century, in the hard
position of woman of all work in a poor family. She worshipped Stephen,
and, as I said, her face had never once looked other than lovingly into
his; but he could not remember the time when he had not thought her
hideous. She had a big brown mole on her chin, out of which grew a few
bristling hairs. It was an unsightly thing, no doubt, on a woman's chin;
and sometimes, when Marty was very angry, the hairs did actually seem to
bristle, as a cat's whiskers do. When Stephen could not speak plain, he
used to point his little dimpled finger at this mole and say, "Do doe
away,--doe away;" and to this day it was a torment to him. His eyes seemed
morbidly drawn toward it at times.. When he was ill, and poor Marty bent
over his bed, ministering to him as no one but a loving old nurse can, he
saw only the mole, and had to make an effort not to shrink from her.
To-night, as she lingered on the threshold, affectionately waiting to
light his path, he was thinking only of her ugliness. But when she
exclaimed, with the privileged irritability of an old servant,--

"Jest look at your feet, Steve! they're wet through, an' your coat too, a
standin' out in that drizzle. Anybody 'ud think you hadn't common sense,"
he replied with perfect good nature, and as heartily loving a tone as if
he had been feasting on her beauty, instead of writhing inwardly at her
ugliness,--

"All right, Marty,--all right. I'm not so wet as I look. I'll change my
coat, and come in to supper in one minute. Don't you fidget about me so,
good Marty." Never was Stephen heard to speak discourteously or even
ungently to a human being. It would have offended his taste. It was not a
matter of principle with him,--not at all: he hardly ever thought of
things in that light. A rude or harsh word, a loud, angry tone, jarred on
his every sense like a discord in music, or an inharmonious color; so he
never used them. But as he ran upstairs, three steps at a time, after his
kind, off-hand words to Marty, he said to himself, "Good heavens! I do
believe Marty gets uglier every day. What a picture Rembrandt would have
made of her old fa