land woman's
inspiration. "Gloves have never been worn here at small tea-parties,"
she said to Evert Winthrop afterwards. "But she thought that your aunt
and Mrs. Harold, coming as they do from New York, would have them, and
so she unearthed those two old pairs. There is really _no_ limit to that
woman's energy; I verily believe that if an East Indian prince should be
wrecked off Gracias, she would find an elephant to receive him with!
Her courage is inexhaustible, and if she had any money _at all_, she'd
move the world--like Archimedes, wasn't it, who only wanted a point for
his lever? To be sure, that is the great thing--the point, and Mr. Carew
used always to say that I forgot mine. I told him that he could pick
them up and put them in himself if he missed them so much, but he said
that anybody could put them in, but that it took a real genius to leave
them out, as I did." Here the good lady laughed heartily. "It was only
his joking way, of course," she added; "you see, Mr. Carew was a
lawyer."

The gloves having been duly put on, the three ladies descended to the
front drawing-room, where Mrs. Thorne seated herself in an attitude
which might have been described as suggesting a cultured expectation.
Her little figure remained erect, not touching the back of her chair;
her hands, endued with the gloves, were folded lightly; her countenance
expressed the highest intelligence, chastened by the memory of the many
trials through which she had passed; this, at least, was what she
intended it to express.

The fall of the gate-latch was now heard again.

"Had we not better be standing?" suggested their hostess, in a hurried
whisper. It was so many years since she had opened her old house for
what she called "evening company" that she felt fluttered and
uncertain--embarrassed, as imaginative people always are, by the number
of things that occurred to her, things she might do.

"I think not, dear friend," answered Mrs. Thorne, with decision. "We are
too few, it would have, I fear, the air of a tableau."

Mrs. Thorne was above flutter, a whisper she scorned. As the approaching
footsteps drew nearer, the listening silence in the drawing-room, whose
long windows stood open, became in her opinion far too apparent; she
coughed, turned to her daughter, and, in her clear little voice,
remarked, "I have always esteemed the pearl the most beautiful of
precious stones. The diamond has more brilliancy, the ruby a richer
glow, but t