pictur' o' joy, if ever I laid my eyes on one!"

Fanny stood beside her tall husband, her pretty face irradiating
happiness. She felt a sincere pity welling up in her heart for Ellen
Dix and Joyce Fulsom and the other girls. Compared with her own
transcendent experiences, their lives seemed cold and bleak to Fanny.
And all the while she was talking to the women who crowded about her.

"Yes; we are getting nicely settled, thank you, Mrs. Fulsom--all but
the attic. Oh, how'd you do, Judge Fulsom?"

The big man wiped the perspiration from his bald forehead.

"Just been fetchin' in th' ice cream freezers," he said, with his
booming chuckle. "I guess I'm 's well 's c'n be expected, under th'
circumstances, ma'am.... An' that r'minds me, parson, a little matter
was s'ggested t' me. In fact, I'd thought of it, some time ago. No
more 'n right, in view o' th' facts. If you don't mind, I'll outline
th' idee t' you, parson, an' see if you approve."

Fanny, striving to focus attention on the pointed remarks Miss Lois
Daggett was making, caught occasional snatches of their conversation.
Fanny had never liked Lois Daggett; but in her new role of minister's
wife, it was her foreordained duty to love everybody and to condole
and sympathize with the parish at large. One could easily sympathize
with Lois Daggett, she was thinking; what would it be like to be
obliged daily to face the reflection of that mottled complexion, that
long, pointed nose, with its rasped tip, that drab lifeless hair with
its sharp hairpin crimp, and those small greenish eyes with no
perceptible fringe of lashes? Fanny looked down from her lovely
height into Miss Daggett's upturned face and pitied her from the
bottom of her heart.

"I hear your brother Jim has gone t' Boston," Miss Daggett was saying
with a simper.

From the rear Fanny heard Judge Fulsom's rumbling monotone, earnestly
addressed to her husband:

"Not that Boston ain't a nice town t' live in; but we'll have t'
enter a demurrer against her staying there f'r good. Y' see--"

"Yes," said Fanny, smiling at Miss Daggett. "He went several days
ago."

"H'm-m," murmured Miss Daggett. "_She's_ livin' there, ain't she?"

"You mean Miss Orr?"

"I mean Miss Lyddy Bolton. I guess Bolton's a good 'nough name for
_her_."

From the Judge, in a somewhat louder tone:

"That's th' way it looks t' me, dominie; an' if all th' leadin'
citizens of Brookville'll put their name to it--an' I'm of th'
opini