ill written in the lines of her face. I had
never seen her angry or bitter, and I had never heard her utter an
unkind word.

Zulime took charge of the work about the house with a cheerfulness which
amazed me. My mother with pathetic confidence leaned upon her daughter's
strong young shoulders and the music of my stern old father's voice as
he said, "Well, daughter, I'm glad you're here," was a revelation to me.
He already loved her as if she were his very own, and she responded to
his affection in a way which put me still more deeply in her debt. It
would have been disheartening, but not at all surprising, had she found
the village and my home intolerable, but she did not--she appeared
content, sustained we will say, by her sense of duty.

Her situation was difficult. Imprisoned in the snowy silences of the
little valley, dependent on her neighbors for entertainment, and
confronted with the care of two invalids and a fretful husband, she was
put to a rigid test.

Beside our base-burning stove she sat night after night playing cinch or
dominoes to amuse my father, while creaking footsteps went by on the
frosty board-walks and in a distant room my aunt lay waiting for the
soft step of the Grim Intruder. It must have seemed a gray outlook for
my bride but she never by word or look displayed uneasiness.

Without putting our conviction into words, we all realized that my
aunt's departure was but a matter of a few days. "There is nothing to
do," the doctor said. "She will go like a person falling asleep. All you
can do is wait--" And so the days passed.

We went to bed each night at ten and quite as regularly rose at
half-past six. Dinner came exactly at noon, supper precisely at six.
Although my upstairs study was a kind of retreat, we spent less time in
it than we had planned to do, for mother was so appealingly wistful to
have us near her that neither of us had the heart to deny her. She could
not endure to have us both absent. Careful not to interrupt my writing,
she considered Zulime's case in different light. "You can read, or sew
or knit down here just as well as up there," she said. "It is a comfort
for me just to have you sit where I can look at you."

She loved to hear me read aloud, and this I often did in the evening
while she sat beside Zulime and watched her fingers fly about her
sewing. These were blissful hours for her, and in these after years I
take a measure of comfort in remembering the part I had in