-kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift.
How each one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the
inner closet was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it
was that led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and
indulge her grief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little
bonnet, a spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when
she took her first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now;
the ribbons were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side
was almost as fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's
delight in the nodding roses!

When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and
finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the
window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling
down her cheeks. God help her!

XIX

The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than
a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the
patient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from the
vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in
domestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel
would be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while
appearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the
gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other--a
severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the
substitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is
certain to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to
habituate one to a lower view of human nature.

There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but
there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. There
was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the
growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get
on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life.
Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the
elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was
now to be endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of
this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the
harder to bear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted
it, and had moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is