f
plain--and there, sure enough, was a handsome face looking into hers,
growing momently handsomer with surprise and pleasure kindling in the
eye and spreading over cheek and brow.

Susan, be it understood, was by no means an ill-favored woman even in
her old-fashioned dress. She had a very good complexion, blue eyes,
large and dark and warm; and a mouth of some character, with mobile
lips and bright even teeth. But nobody had ever called her handsome
till to-day, neither had anybody called her plain. She had simply
passed unmarked. But what she had all along needed was somebody
to develop her resources, somebody to do just what had been done
to-day--to get her into a dress that would bring out her clear
complexion, that would harmonize with the shade of her earnest eyes;
to take her hair out of that hard twist at the back of the head, and
lay it tiara-like, a bright mass, above the brow; to substitute soft
lace for stiff, glazed linen, and a graceful knot of ribbon for
that rectangular piece of gold with a faded ambrotype in it called a
breastpin. And, too, she needed that walk she took in the crisp air to
bring the glow into her cheek; and then she needed that meeting with
Mr. Falconer, which chanced in that walk, to heighten the glow and to
brighten her already pleased eyes. The meeting took place at the door
of her house. It was an arrested, lingering look which he gave
her, and doubtless it was the character of this look, conscious and
significant, that deepened the glow in her face,

"I wonder if I affected him like a fine picture or a fine strain of
music?" Susan asked herself in passing him.

"Miss Summerhaze must be acting on the hint I gave her," thought
Mr. Falconer; and he went on with a little smile about his mouth. It
pleased him to think he had influenced her.

Thus it was that this man and this woman came to think of each other.
And now you are guessing that this thinking of each other advanced
into a warmer interest--that these two people fell in love if they
were not too far gone in years for such nonsense. Well for us all that
there are hearts that are never too old for the sweet nonsense--the
nonsense that is more sensible than half the philosophy of the sages.
Your guess is so good that I should feel chagrined if I were one of
those writers who delight in mysteries and in surprising the
reader. But my highest aim is to tell a straight-forward story, so
I acknowledge the guess correct, so far, a