d, "And he is in
love." The picture was framed handsomely in a gilded frame. On the desk
below, an exquisite vase of Venice lifted a single, perfect rose. For
fifteen years a flower had always bloomed thus. Miss Wing had hung the
picture herself, fifteen years ago. Then, she was the new principal, and
the school was but half its size; and the village people exclaimed at
trusting "such a girl" with so much responsibility. During those fifteen
years the new building had been built, the school had grown and
flourished; and the gray had crept into Margaret Wing's bright hair. She
had so often put on mourning for her near kindred that she had assumed
it as her permanent garb. To the certain (and ecstatic) knowledge of the
school, she had refused divers offers of marriage from citizens of good
repute and substance. But during all the changing years, the picture had
kept its place and the fresh flowers had bloomed below. No girl could
remember the desk without the picture; and when the old girls visited
the school, their eyes would instinctively seek it in its old place;
always with a little moving of the heart. Yet no one ever alluded to it
to the principal; and no one, not her most trusted teacher, nor her best
loved pupil, had ever heard the principal speak of it. The name of the
pictured soldier, his story, his relation to Miss Wing; Miss Wing's
nearest kindred and friends knew as much about all these as the
school--and that was nothing. Nevertheless, the school tradition
reported part of a name on the authority of a single incident. Years ago
an accident happened to the picture. It was the principal's custom to
carry it with her on her journeys, however brief; always taking it down
and putting it back in its place herself. On this occasion the floor had
been newly polished, and in hanging the picture her chair on which she
stood slipped and she fell, while the picture dropped out of her grasp.
One of the girls, who was passing, ran to her aid; but she had crawled
toward the picture and would have it in her hands before she allowed the
girl to aid her to rise--a circumstance, you may be sure, not likely to
escape the sharp young eyes. Neither did these same eyes miss the
further circumstance that the jar had shifted the _carte_ in the frame
and a line of writing, hitherto hidden, was staring out at the world.
The hand was the sharp, minute German hand, but the words were English;
the girl took them in at an eyeblink, as she