ope having come from above stairs where I had heard her moving
about as if in some search, I think that I recognized, even before I
lifted my eyes to it, the photograph which she gave me. It was as if the
name had heard me, and had come.

"It's Linda," Calliope said. "It's Linda Proudfit. An' I'm certain,
certain sure it's the Linda that Peleg knew."

"Surely not, Calliope," I said--obedient to some law.

Calliope nodded, with closed eyes, in simple certainty.

"I _know_ it was her that Peleg meant about," she said. "I thought of it
first when he said about her looks--an' her husband a clerk--an' he said
he called her Linda. An' then when he got to where she mentioned Aunt
Nita--that's what her an' Clementina always calls Mis' Ordway, though
she ain't by rights--oh, it is--it is...."

Calliope sat down on the floor before me, cherishing the picture. And
all natural doubts of the possibility, all apparent denial in the real
name of Linda Proudfit's poor young husband were for us both presently
overborne by something which seemed viewlessly witnessing to the truth.

"But little Linda," Calliope said, "to think o' her. To think o'
_her_--like Peleg said. Why, I hardly ever see her excep' in all silk,
or imported kinds. None of us did. I hardly ever 'see her walk--it was
horses and carriages and dance in a ballroom till I wonder she
remembered how to walk at all. Everything with her was cut good, an'
kid, an' handwork, an' like that--the same way the Proudfits is now. But
yet she wasn't a bit like Mis' Proudfit an' Clementina. They're both
sweet an' rule-lovin' an' ladies born, but--" Calliope hesitated,
"they's somethin' they _ain't_. An' Linda was."

Calliope looked about the room, seeking a way to tell me. And her eyes
fell on the flame on her cooking-stove hearth.

"Linda had a little somethin' in her that lit her up," she said. "She
didn't say much of anything that other folks don't say, but somehow she
meant the words farther in. In where the light was, an' words mean
differ'nt an' better. I use' to think I didn't believe that what she saw
or heard or read was exactly like what her mother an' Clementina an'
most folks see an' hear an' read. Somehow, she got the inside out o'
things, an' drew it in like breathin', an' lit it up, an' lived it more.
I donno's you know what I'm talkin' about. But Mis' Proudfit an'
Clementina don't do that way. They're dear an' good an' generous, an'
lots gentler than they was befo