eautiful eyes, curling hair,
and all. And yet in her composition there was something wanting,
something very essential, too; for she lacked soul, and would at any
time have sold her best friend for a flattering compliment.

Still Carrie Howard was generally a favorite. The old people liked her
because her sparkling eye and merry laugh brought back to them a gleam
of youth; the young people liked her, because to dislike her would
seem like envy; and I, who was nothing, liked her because she was
pretty, and I greatly admired beauty, though I am not certain that I
should not have liked a handsome rosebud quite as well as I did Carrie
Howard's beautiful face, for beautiful she was.

Her mother, good, plain Mrs. Howard, was entirely unlike her daughter.
She was simply "Mrs. Captain Howard," or, in other words, "Aunt
Eunice," whose benevolent smile and kindly beaming eye carried
contentment wherever she went. Really, I don't know how Rice Corner
could have existed one day without the presence of Aunt Eunice. Was
there a cut foot or hand in the neighborhood, hers was the salve which
healed it, almost as soon as applied. Was there a pale, fretful baby,
Aunt Eunice's large bundle of catnip was sure to soothe it, and did a
sick person need watchers, Aunt Eunice was the one who, three nights
out of the seven, trod softly and quietly about the sick-room,
anticipating each want before you yourself knew what it was, and
smoothing your tumbled pillow so gently that you almost felt it a
luxury to be sick, for the sake of being nursed by Aunt Eunice. The
very dogs and cats winked more composedly when she appeared; and even
the chickens learned her voice almost as soon as they did the cluck of
their "maternal ancestor."

But we must stop, or we shall make Aunt Eunice out to be the belle,
instead of Carrie, who, instead of imitating her mother in her acts of
kindness, sat all day in the large old parlor, thumping away on a
rickety piano, or trying to transfer to broadcloth a poor little
kitty, whose face was sufficiently indicative of surprise at finding
its limbs so frightfully distorted.

When Carrie was fifteen years of age her father, concluding that she
knew all which could possibly be learned in the little brown house
where Joe and Jim once fought so fiercely, sent her for three years to
Albany. It was currently reported that the uncle with whom she boarded
received his pay in butter, cheese, potatoes, apples, and other
commodi