paper. When she turned her face toward the low,
red station-house and the people, it looked gentle, and the least in the
world sad. She had one of those clear olive skins that easily grow pale;
it was pale to-day. Her black hair was fine as spun silk; the coil under
her hat-brim shone as she moved. The fine hair, the soft, transparent
skin, and the beautiful marking of her brows were responsible for an air
of fragile daintiness in her person, just as her almond-shaped,
liquid dark eyes and unsmiling mouth made her look sad. It was a most
attractive face, in all its moods; sometimes it was a beautiful face;
yet it did not have a single perfect feature except the mouth, which--at
least so Harry Lossing told his mother--might have been stolen from the
Venus of Milo. Even the mouth, some critics called too small for her
nose; but it is as easy to call her nose too large for her mouth.

The instant she turned her back on the bustle of the station, all the
lines in her face seemed to waver and the eyes to brighten. Finally,
when the train rolled up to the platform and a young-looking elderly man
swung himself nimbly off the steps, the color flared up in her cheeks,
only to sink as suddenly; like a candle flame in a gust of wind.

Mr. Armorer put his two arms and his umbrella and travelling-bag about
the charming shape in blue, at the same time exclaiming, "You're a good
girl to come out so early, Essie! How's Aunt Meg?"

"Oh, very well. She would have come too, but she hasn't come back from
training."

"Training?"

"Yes, dear, she has a regular trainer, like John L. Sullivan, you know.
She drives out to the park with Eliza and me, and walks and runs races,
and does gymnastics. She has lost ten pounds."

Armorer wagged his head with a grin: "I dare say. I thought so when you
began. Meg is always moaning and groaning because she isn't a sylph!
She will make her cook's life a burden for about two months and lose ten
pounds, and then she will revel in ice-cream! Last time, she was raving
about Dr. Salisbury and living on beefsteak sausages, spending a fortune
starving herself."

"She had Dr. Salisbury's pamphlet; but Cardigan told her it was a long
way out; so she said she hated to have it do no one any good, and she
gave it to Maria, one of the maids, who is always fretting because she
is so thin."

"But the thing was to cure fat people!"

"Precisely." Esther laughed a little low laugh, at which her father's
eyes shon