on the station platform.

Poor Sally Patterson unpacked little Content's trunks. She had sent the
little girl to school within a few days after her arrival. Lily Jennings
and Amelia Wheeler called for her, and aided her down the street between
them, arms interlocked. Content, although Sally had done her best with a
pretty ready-made dress and a new hat, was undeniably a peculiar-looking
child. In the first place, she had an expression so old that it was
fairly uncanny.

"That child has downward curves beside her mouth already, and lines
between her eyes, and what she will look like a few years hence is
beyond me," Sally told her husband after she had seen the little girl go
out of sight between Lily's curls and ruffles and ribbons and Amelia's
smooth skirts.

"She doesn't look like a happy child," agreed the rector. "Poor little
thing! Her aunt Eudora must have been a queer woman to train a child."

"She is certainly trained," said Sally, ruefully; "too much so. Content
acts as if she were afraid to move or speak or even breathe unless
somebody signals permission. I pity her."

She was in the storeroom, in the midst of Content's baggage. The rector
sat on an old chair, smoking. He had a conviction that it behooved him
as a man to stand by his wife during what might prove an ordeal. He
had known Content's deceased aunt years before. He had also known the
clergyman who had taken charge of her personal property and sent it on
with Content.

"Be prepared for finding almost anything. Sally," he observed. "Mr.
Zenock Shanksbury, as I remember him, was so conscientious that it
amounted to mania. I am sure he has sent simply unspeakable things
rather than incur the reproach of that conscience of his with regard to
defrauding Content of one jot or tittle of that personal property."

Sally shook out a long, black silk dress, with jet dangling here and
there. "Now here is this dress," said she. "I suppose I really must keep
this, but when that child is grown up the silk will probably be cracked
and entirely worthless."

"You had better take the two trunks and pack them with such things, and
take your chances."

"Oh, I suppose so. I suppose I must take chances with everything except
furs and wools, which will collect moths. Oh, goodness!" Sally held up
an old-fashioned fitch fur tippet. Little vague winged things came from
it like dust. "Moths!" said she, tragically. "Moths now. It is full
of them. Edward, you need not t