ctly like the
picture; but when she had wiped the dust off the canvas, and saw the
painting clearly, she began to realize and count the differences. The
portrait was that of a young woman, not a girl still almost a child.
Knowledge and love of the world glittered in the great dark eyes which
turned up ever so slightly at their outer corners in a curiously
bewitching way. Barrie's eyes were dark too, but they were hazel, and
could look gray or even greenish yellow in a bright light; but the eyes
in the picture were almost black, and full of a triumphing consciousness
of their own fascination. The artist had hinted at dimples, and these
Barrie's cheeks repeated; but the girl's face was in shape a delicate
oval, though the chin was as firm as if a loving thumb and finger had
pinched it into prominence. The face on the canvas was fuller, shorter,
squarer, and its chin was cleft in the middle. The mouth was smaller and
more pouting--a self-conscious, petulant mouth; but Barrie thought it
beautiful, with its flowerlike, half-smiling red lips.

"Mother--mother!" she said, "darling, lovely mother! Oh, if you could
only talk to me! If you could only tell me all about yourself!"

As she spoke aloud something moved in the garret: a board creaked, a
struck chair or table scraped along the uneven floor, and Mrs. Muir
appeared round a corner of the piled furniture. Barrie stiffened
herself, standing up straight and tall and defiant, ready for battle,
holding the portrait as if it were a shield. But she was not prepared to
see Mrs. Muir start back, stumbling against something which fell with a
sharp crash, nor to hear her give vent to a squeal of terror. It was
anger the girl had expected to rouse, not fear, and she faced the old
housekeeper from her distance in blank astonishment.

They stood staring at each other across the shadows lit by floating
motes of gold; and Mrs. Muir's large, pallid face looked, Barrie
thought, as if it had been turned to gray stone, the gray stone of the
carved monuments in the family burial-ground. For a moment neither
spoke, but at last some words seemed to drop from the old woman's mouth,
rather than be deliberately uttered:

"May God have mercy on me!"

"What _is_ the matter?" Barrie exclaimed, the strange spell broken; but
instead of answering, Mrs. Muir gasped, and then broke out crying, a
queer gurgly sort of crying which frightened the girl. She did not
dislike the housekeeper, and she was so