y-fashion, for Luclarion would not
set any fashions that her poor neighbors might not follow if they
would;--and her shelves kept always dusted down; they could see her
way of doing that, as they happened in at different times, when she
whisked about, lightly and nicely, behind and between her jars and
boxes and parcels with the little feather duster that she kept
hanging over her table where she made her change and sat at her
sewing.

They grew ashamed by degrees,--those coarse women,--to come in in
their frowsy rags, to buy her delicate muffins or her white loaves;
they would fling on the cleanest shawl they had or could borrow, to
"cut round to Old Maid Grapp's," after a cent's worth of yeast,--for
her yeast, also, was like none other that could be got, and would
_almost_ make her own beautiful bread of itself.

Back of the shop was her house-room; the cheapest and cleanest of
carpet,--a square, bound round with bright-striped carpet-binding,--laid
in the middle of a clean dark yellow floor; a plain pine table, scoured
white, standing in the middle of that; on it, at tea-time, common blue
and white crockery cups and plates, and a little black teapot; a napkin,
coarse, but fresh from the fold, laid down to save, and at the same
time to set off, with a touch of delicate neatness, the white table;
a wooden settee, with a home-made calico-covered cushion and pillows,
set at right angles with the large, black, speckless stove; a wooden
rocking-chair, made comfortable in like manner, on the other side; the
sink in the corner, clean, freshly rinsed, with the bright tin basin
hung above it on a nail.

There was nothing in the whole place that must not be, in some
shape, in almost the poorest; but all so beautifully ordered, so
stainlessly kept. Through that open door, those women read a daily
sermon.

And Luclarion herself,--in a dark cotton print gown, a plain strip
of white about the throat,--even that was cotton, not linen, and two
of them could be run together in ten minutes for a cent,--and a
black alpacca apron, never soiled or crumpled, but washed and ironed
when it needed, like anything else,--her hair smoothly gathered back
under a small white half-handkerchief cap, plain-hemmed,--was the
sermon alive; with the soul of it, the inner sweetness and purity,
looking out at them from clear pleasant eyes, and lips cheery with a
smile that lay behind them.

She had come down there just to do as God told her to be a