u a cup of hot tea. That's what mothah always takes. No!
It won't be any _trouble_," she exclaimed, as Miss Sarah protested. "It
will be the biggest kind of a pleasuah. It will give me a chance to use
mothah's little tea-ball. I deahly love to wiggle it around in the cup
and see the watah po'ah out of all the little holes. I've been wishing
somebody would come, or that I had something to do. Now you have granted
both wishes. I can have a regulah little tea-pah'ty. Excuse me just a
minute, please."

Left to herself, Miss Sarah sat looking around at the handsome
furnishings: the thick Persian rugs, the old portraits, the tall,
burnished harp in the corner, the bowl of hothouse violets on the table
at her elbow, until Lloyd returned, bearing a toasting fork and a plate
of thinly sliced bread. Miss Sarah turned toward her with wistful eyes.

"I have always loved this old room," she said. "This is the first time I
have been in it for twenty years. It is an old friend. I have spent many
happy hours here in your grandmother's day. She was always entertaining
the young people of the Valley. Sometimes that time seems so far away
that I wonder if it was not all a dream. It was a very beautiful dream,
at any rate. I often wish Agnes could have had a share in it. She has
missed so much in not having _her_ friendship."

She nodded toward the portrait over the mantel. "Amanthis Lloyd was my
ideal woman when I was a young girl like yourself," she added, softly,
with her eyes on the beautiful features above her.

"I have missed so much, too," said Lloyd, following Miss Sarah's gaze.
"And yet it seems to me I must have known her. The portrait has always
seemed alive to me. I used to talk to it sometimes when I was a little
thing, and I nevah could beah to look at it when I had been naughty. I
wish you would tell me about her."

She knelt on the hearth-rug as she spoke, and held the long
toasting-fork toward the fire. "Mothah and grandfathah often talk about
her, but they don't tell the same things that one outside of the family
might."

By the time the toast was delicately browned and buttered, Mom Beck came
in with the tea-tray, and placed it on the table beside the bowl of
violets.

"Good!" exclaimed Lloyd, seating herself on the other side of the table
as the old woman left the room. "I didn't think to tell her to bring
cold turkey and strawberry preserves and fruit cake, but she remembered
that I didn't eat much lunch, and s