e made her necessary purchases, and
at the house-of-study near by, where she prayed twice every day. She was
about sixty, rather undersized, and very thin, but more lithesome in her
movements than is common at that age. Her face was full of creases and
wrinkles, and her light brown eyes were somewhat dulled, but her ready
smile and quiet glance told of a good heart and a kindly temper. Her
simple old gown was always neat, her wig tastefully arranged, her
lodging and its furniture clean and tidy--and all this attracted us to
her from the first day onward. We were still more taken with her
retiring manner, the quiet way in which she kept herself in the
background and the slight melancholy of her expression, telling of a
life that had held much sadness.

We made advances. She was very willing to become acquainted with us, and
it was not very long before she was like a mother to us, or an old aunt.
My wife was then an inexperienced "housemistress" fresh to her duties,
and found a great help in the old woman, who smilingly taught her how to
proceed with the housekeeping. When our first child was born, she took
it to her heart, and busied herself with its upbringing almost more than
the young mother. It was evident that dandling the child in her arms was
a joy to her beyond words. At such moments her eyes would brighten, her
wrinkles grew faint, a curiously satisfied smile played round her lips,
and a new note of joy came into her voice.

At first sight all this seemed quite simple, because a woman is
naturally inclined to care for little children, and it may have been so
with her to an exceptional degree, but closer examination convinced me
that here lay yet another reason; her attentions to the child, so it
seemed, awakened pleasant memories of a long-ago past, when she herself
was a young mother caring for children of her own, and looking at this
strange child had stirred a longing for those other children, further
from her eyes, but nearer to her heart, although perhaps quite unknown
to her--who perhaps existed only in her imagination.

And when we were made acquainted with the details of her life, we knew
our conjectures to be true. Her history was very simple and commonplace,
but very tragic. Perhaps the tragedy of such biographies lies in their
being so very ordinary and simple!

She lived quietly and happily with her husband for twenty years after
their marriage. They were not rich, but their little house was a kin