neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's
face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves,
yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and
sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have
thought her a queen among women.

While I sat like a lotos-eater, forgetful of home and butter-making, a
servant brought in a parcel and a note. Mrs. Rayne tossed the note to me
while she unfolded a roll of gray silk.

Dear Guinevere: I send with this a bit of silk that old Fut'ali insisted
on giving to me this morning. It is that horrid gray color which we both
detest. I know you will never wear it, and you had better give it to
Miss Blake to make a toga for her first appearance in the women's
Senate. LANCELOT.

"With all my heart!" said Mrs. Rayne as I gave back the note. "You will
please us both far more than you can please yourself by wearing the
dress with a thought of us. I wonder why Mr. Rayne calls me 'Guinevere'?
But he has a new name for me every day, because he does not like my
own."

"What is it?"

"Waitstill. Did you ever hear it?"

"Never but once," I said with a sudden tightness in my throat. I could
scarcely speak my thanks for the dress.

"I should never wear it," said Mrs. Rayne: "the color is associated with
a very painful part of my life."

"Do you suppose water would spot it?" asked Rhoda, who is of a practical
turn of mind.

"Take a bit and try it."

"Water spots some grays" said Mrs. Rayne with a strange sort of smile as
Rhoda went out, "especially salt water. I spent one night at sea in an
open boat, with a gray dress clinging wet and salt to my limbs. When I
tore it off in rags I seemed to shed all the misery I had ever known.
All my life since then has been bright as you see it now. It would be a
bad omen to put on a gray gown again."

"Then you have made a sea-voyage, Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, such a long voyage!--worse than the 'Ancient Mariner's.' No words
can tell how I hate the sea." She sighed deeply, with a sudden darkening
of her gray eyes till they were almost black, and grasped one wrist hard
with the other hand.

A sudden trembling seized me. I was almost as much agitated as Mrs.
Rayne. I felt that I must clinch the matter somehow, but I took refuge
in a platitude to gain time: "There is such a difference in ships,
almost as much as in houses, and the comfort of the voyage depends
greatly on that."

"It may be so," she sa