like her, and there never will be. 'Nonesuch,' Reuben
used to call her."

There was silence in the room, broken only by the ticking of the old
clock and the tinkle of a distant cowbell. Priscilla made an impetuous
movement, flung herself down by the basket of rags, and buried her head
in Diadema's gingham apron.

"Dear Mrs. Bascom, don't cry. I'm sorry, as the children say."

"No, I won't more 'n a minute. Jot can't stand it to see me give way.
You go and touch a match to the kitchen fire, so 't the kettle will
be boiling, and I'll have a minute to myself. I don't know what the
neighbors would think to ketch me crying over my drawing-in frame; but
the spell's over now, or 'bout over, and when I can muster up courage
I'll take the rest of the baby's cloak and put a border of white
everlastings round the outside of the rug. I'll always mean the baby's
birth and Lovey's death to me; but the flowers will remind me it 's life
everlasting for both of 'em, and so it's the most comforting end I can
think of."

It was indeed a beautiful rug when it was finished and laid in front of
the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it. When company
was expected she removed it from its accustomed place, and spread it in
a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly tread on it.
Unexpected callers were managed by a different method. If they seated
themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not "set easy" or "rest
comfortable" there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed chair by
the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely another sign of
Diadema's "p'ison neatness," excusable in this case as there was so much
white in the new rug.

The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness of death
pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was
allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window,
and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place, Miss Hollis would look in as
she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance
of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned
posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads.
Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that
all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage,
motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death, were
chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square.

Diadema