ould lay hold
of,--that big sympathetic world which knew so much more than Silas
Stevens.

When the hour came to close the office at noon, she locked the drawer
and passed out of the door to the footpath with a sense of triumph under
the habitual shyness of her manner. She still shrank from the publicity
she had achieved, but she was conscious of an undercurrent of desire
that her achievement, since it was real, should be recognized.

When the old postmaster died, leaving Lucyet, his only child, alone in
the world, and interest in official quarters had procured for her the
appointment in her father's place, a home had also been offered her at
Miss Flood's; and it was thither that Lucyet now went for her noonday
meal. Miss Delia Flood was of most kindly disposition and literary
tastes. That these tastes were somewhat prescribed in their
manifestation was no witness against their genuineness. It must be
confessed that Miss Delia's preference was for the sentimental,--though
she would have modestly shrunk from hearing it thus baldly stated,--and,
naturally, for poetry above prose. The modern respect for "strength" in
literature would have impressed her most painfully had she known of it.
The mind turns aside from the contemplation of the effect that a story
or two of Kipling's would have produced upon her could she have grasped
their vocabulary; she would probably have taken to her bed in sheer
fright, as she did in a thunderstorm. Poetry of the heart and emotions,
which never verged, even most distantly, upon what her traditions and
her susceptibilities told her was the indecorous, satisfied her highest
demands, and the less said about nature, except by way of an occasional
willow, or the sad, sweet scent of a jasmine flower, the better. Miss
Delia had fostered Lucyet's love for literature; and it was to Miss
Delia that Lucyet hastened with the great news of the publication of her
poem. It was for this acute pleasure that she had hitherto kept the
knowledge of her attempt from her,--and, too, that her joy might be
full, and that she would not have to suffer the alternating phases of
hope and fear through which Lucyet herself had passed.

As she entered the room where dinner stood on the table and Miss Delia
waited to eat it with her, she suppressed the trembling excitement which
threatened to make itself visible in her manner now that the words were
upon her very lips. They seated themselves at the table. Miss Delia was