n a sagging
old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in
great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There
was a worm-eaten, russet-apple tree in the yard, an untidy tangle of
wild-cucumber vine over the front porch, and an uncut brush of
sunburned grass and weeds all about.

From May until September you never passed the Decker place without
hearing the plunkety-plink of a mandolin from somewhere behind the
vines, laughter, and the creak-creak of the hard-worked and protesting
hammock hooks.

Flora, Ella, and Grace Decker had had more beaux and fewer clothes than
any other girls in Chippewa. In a town full of pretty young things,
they were, undoubtedly, the prettiest; and in a family of pretty
sisters (Sophy always excepted) Flora was the acknowledged beauty. She
was the kind of girl whose nose never turns red on a frosty morning. A
little, white, exquisite nose, purest example of the degree of
perfection which may be attained by that vulgarest of features. Under
her great gray eyes were faint violet shadows which gave her a look of
almost poignant wistfulness. Her slow, sweet smile give the beholder
an actual physical pang. Only her family knew she was lazy as a
behemoth, untidy about her person, and as sentimental as a hungry
shark. The strange and cruel part of it was that, in some grotesque,
exaggerated way, as a cartoon may be like a photograph, Sophy resembled
Flora. It was as though nature, in prankish mood, had given a cabbage
the color and texture of a rose, with none of its fragile reticence and
grace.

It was a manless household. Mrs. Decker, vague, garrulous, referred to
her dead husband, in frequent reminiscence, as poor Mr. Decker. Mrs.
Decker dragged one leg as she walked--rheumatism, or a spinal
affection. Small wonder, then, that Sophy, the plain, with a gift for
hatmaking, a knack at eggless cake baking, and a genius for turning a
sleeve so that last year's style met this year's without a struggle,
contributed nothing to the sag in the center of the old twine hammock
on the front porch.

That the three girls should marry well, and Sophy not at all, was as
inevitable as the sequence of the seasons. Ella and Grace did not
manage badly, considering that they had only their girlish prettiness
and the twine hammock to work with. But Flora, with her beauty,
captured H. Charnsworth Baldwin. Chippewa gasped. H. Charnsworth
Baldwin drove a skitti