me, into the great, working world.

"Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and
Doubleday's, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found
Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see
Amy. That's the sort of thing I can't believe when I do see
it,--Mary's baby married and housekeeping! I'm glad you are my
elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you.
Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer
together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled
women as you _can_ be at forty-three."

With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended.

Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you
think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her
for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true
beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure,
gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is
lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own
words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of
falseness?

If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes
as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would
have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had
gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not
stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering
of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or
smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only
made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her;
fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither
neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty
three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight,
beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her
face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it.

She saw a picture like this:--

Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves
imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as
lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never
learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest
harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of
consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented
play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of suns