perated by the
pillage of her handkerchiefs. Although she possessed a supply of
handkerchiefs far beyond her own needs, she really hated to lend to her
mother in the hour of necessity. She did lend, and she lent without
spoken protest, but with frigid bitterness. Her youthful passion for
order and efficiency was aggrieved by her mother's negligent and
inadequate arrangements for coping with the inevitable plague. She now
made a police-visit to the bedroom because she considered that her
mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the
progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother should have come to
the end of her own handkerchiefs! She knew with all the certitude of her
omniscience that numerous clean handkerchiefs must be concealed
somewhere in the untidiness of her mother's wardrobe.

See her as she enters the bedroom, the principal bedroom of the house,
whose wide bed and large wardrobe recall the past when she had a father
as well as a mother, and when that bedroom awed her footsteps! A thin,
brown-frocked girl, wearing a detested but enforced small black apron;
with fine, pale, determined features, rather unfeminine hair, and
glowering, challenging black eyes. She had a very decided way of putting
down her uncoquettishly shod feet. Absurdly young, of course; wistfully
young! She was undeveloped, and did not even look nearly twenty-one. You
are at liberty to smile at her airs; at that careless critical glance
which pityingly said: "Ah! if this were my room, it would be different
from what it is;" at that serious worried expression, as if the anxiety
of the whole world's deficiencies oppressed the heart within; and at
that supreme conviction of wisdom, which after all was little but an
exaggerated perception of folly and inconsistency in others!... She is
not to be comprehended on an acquaintance of three days. Years must go
to the understanding of her. She did not understand herself. She was not
even acquainted with herself. Why! She was naive enough to be puzzled
because she felt older than her mother and younger than her beautiful
girlish complexion, simultaneously!

She opened the central mirrored door of the once formidable wardrobe,
and as she did so the image of the bed and of half the room shot across
the swinging glass, taking the place of her own reflection. And
instantly, when she inserted herself between the exposed face of the
wardrobe and its door, she was precipitated into th