gs out on the stoop, and the timid invitations
to take a walk, the pressure of the hand, the smile out of the eyes--oh,
why----

All her life she had been asking "Why?"--taking the hard and distasteful
because she thought there was a virtue in it, not because she had been
trained to believe goodness must have a severe side and that really
pleasant things were wicked. The "Whys" had never been answered, much as
she had prayed about them.

She would never take the girl to bring up now. As for Doris
Adams--Cousin Winthrop would be thinking presently that the ground
wasn't good enough for her to walk on. So there was only Betty, unless
she took up some of the Perkins girls. Abby was rather nice. But, after
all, her father was only a half-brother to Aunt Priscilla's husband. And
she must make that will.

"Missus, aint you goin' to come to supper? I told you 'twas ready full
five minutes ago," said an aggrieved voice.

Aunt Priscilla sprang up and gave herself a kind of mental shaking. She
stepped around to avoid the little girl on the rug with the cat in her
lap. Polly went on grumbling. The toast was cold, the tea had drawn too
long, and for once the mistress never said a word in dispraise.

"She's goin' off," thought Polly. "That's a bad sign, though she does
sit over the fire a good deal, and you can't tell by that. Land alive! I
hope she'll live my time out, or I'll sure have to go to the poorhouse!"

Aunt Priscilla went back to her fire and the vision of the little girl
who had made a curious impression on her by a kind of sweetness quite
new in her experience. It had disturbed her greatly. Nothing about the
child had been as she supposed.

Everybody went down to her, which meant that she had some subtle,
indescribable charm, but Aunt Priscilla would have said she had no
dictionary words to explain it, though there had been a speller and
definer in her day.

The little girl had come to "seven times" in the tables. She had studied
an hour, when Betty said they had better go and get back by dark. Jamie
boy gave a little "snicker" as she shut her book. The disdain of her
young compeer was quite hard to bear, but she meekly accepted the fact
that she "wasn't smart." If she had known how he longed to go with them,
she would have felt quite even, but he kept that to himself.

All Boston was still hooded in snow, for every few days there came a
new fall. Oh, how beautiful it was! Everybody walked in the middle of
th