, as I remember them. From babyhood, I
felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it
was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my
mother's.

She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
letter. It was just like my mother:--"Alice, I need you. You and I ought
to have but one home now. Will you come?"

I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,--"I'm not fit that you
should love me so, Marie."

And how mother laughed at it!

When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she
was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,
that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little
fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the
window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over
the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and
bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the
little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.
The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only
mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and
looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late
afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,
too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,--lilies of the
valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,
unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest
picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It
used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children
wondered a little that she took it up stairs.

"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I
wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."

Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear
sister to me."

She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
came away.

That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from