about
her for some pretense of duty to solace her poor mind. There again she
caught sight of herself in the glass.

"Oh, my!" breathed Lucy Ann. Low as they were, the words held a fullness
of joy.

Her face had been aging through these days of grief; it had grown more
and more like her mother's. She felt as if a hand had been stretched out
to her, holding a gift, and at that moment something told her how to
make the gift enduring. Running over to the little table where her
mother's work-basket stood, as it had been, undisturbed, she took out a
pair of scissors, and went back to the glass. There she let down her
thick gray hair, parted it carefully on the sides, and cut off lock
after lock about her face. She looked a caricature of her sober self.
But she was well used to curling hair like this, drawing its crisp
silver into shining rings; and she stood patiently before the glass and
coaxed her own locks into just such fashion as had framed the older
face. It was done, and Lucy Ann looked at herself with a smile all
suffused by love and longing. She was not herself any more; she had gone
back a generation, and chosen a warmer niche. She could have kissed her
face in the glass, it was so like that other dearer one. She did finger
the little curls, with a reminiscent passion, not daring to think of the
darkness where the others had been shut; and, at that instant, she felt
very rich. The change suggested a more faithful portraiture, and she
went up into the spare room and looked through the closet where her
mother's clothes had been hanging so long, untouched. Selecting a purple
thibet, with a little white sprig, she slipped off her own dress, and
stepped into it. She crossed a muslin kerchief on her breast, and pinned
it with the cameo her mother had been used to wear. It was impossible to
look at herself in the doing; but when the deed was over, she went again
to the glass and stood there, held by a wonder beyond her will. She had
resurrected the creature she loved; this was an enduring portrait,
perpetuating, in her own life, another life as well.

"I'll pack away my own clo'es to-morrer," said Lucy Ann to herself.
"Them are the ones to be put aside."

She went downstairs, hushed and tremulous, and seated herself again, her
thin hands crossed upon her lap; and there she stayed, in a pleasant
dream, not of the future, and not even of the past, but face to face
with a recognition of wonderful possibilities. She had d