three fine nervous wrinkles had deepened between her arched
eyebrows, and the soft redness I had objected to, covered her hands; yet
that spirit of gaiety, which had seemed to me to resemble the spirit of
the bird singing in the old grey house, still showed in her voice and
her smile. As she brewed the tea in the little brown tea-pot and poured
it into the delicate cups, with the faded pattern of moss rosebuds
around the brim, I wondered, half in a dream, from what inexhaustible
source she drew this courage which faced life, not with endurance, but
with blitheness. Were the ghosts of the dead Blands and Fairfaxes from
whom she had sprung fighting over again their ancient battles in their
descendant?

"This is a nice party, isn't it?" she asked, when she had brought the
hot buttered toast from the kitchen and cut it into very small slices on
my plate; "the tea smells deliciously. I paid a dollar and a quarter for
a pound of it this morning."

"If I'm ever rich again you shall pay a million and a quarter, if you
want to."

The charming archness awoke in her eyes, while she looked at me over the
brim of the cup.

"Isn't this just as nice as being rich, Ben?" she asked; "I am really,
you know, a far better cook than Aunt Mehitable."

"All the same I'd rather live on bread and water than have you do it," I
answered.

She lifted her hand, pushing the heavy hair from her forehead, and my
gaze fell on the jagged scar on her wrist. Then, as she caught my
glance, her arm dropped suddenly under the table, and she pulled her
loose muslin sleeve into place.

"Does the burn hurt you, Sally?"

"Not now--it is quite healed. At first it smarted a little."

"Darling, how did you do it?"

"I've forgotten. On the stove, I think."

I fell back on the pillow, too faint, in spite of the tea I had taken,
to follow a thought in which there was so sharp and so incessant a pang.
Before my eyes the little table, with its white cloth and its fragile
china service, decorated with moss rosebuds, appeared to dissolve into
some painful dream distance, in which the sound of the humming-birds at
the jessamine grew gradually louder.

Six days longer I remained in bed, too weak to get into my clothes, or
to stand on my feet, but at the end of that time I was permitted to
struggle to the square of sunlight by the window, where I sat for an
hour with the warm breeze from the garden blowing into my face. For the
first day or two I was unable