; poor Miss Priscilla had had a bad fall in Old Street while
she was on the way to market, and at first they feared she had broken
her hip, but it turned out that she was only dreadfully bruised; Major
Peachey had died very suddenly and she had felt obliged to go to his
funeral; Abby Goode had been home on a visit and everybody said she
didn't look a day over twenty-five, though she was every bit of
forty-four. Then, taking a little pile of samples from her work basket
which stood on the table, she showed him a piece of black brocaded
satin. "Miss Willy is making me a dress out of this to wear in New York
with you. I don't suppose you noticed whether or not they were wearing
brocade."

No, he hadn't noticed, but the sample was very pretty, he thought. "Why
don't you buy a dress there, Virginia? It would save you so much
trouble."

"Poor little Miss Willy has set her heart on making it, Oliver. And,
besides, I shan't have time if we go only the day before."

A flush had come to her face; at the corners of her mouth a tender
little smile rippled; and her look of faded sweetness gave place for an
instant to the warmth and the animation of girlhood. But the excitement
of girlhood could not restore to her the freshness of youth. Her
pleasure was the pleasure of middle-age; the wistful expectancy in her
face was the expectancy of one whose interests are centred on little
things. That inviolable quality of self-sacrifice, the quality which
knit her soul to the enduring soul of her race, had enabled her to find
happiness in the simple act of renouncement. The quiet years had kept
undiminished the inordinate capacity for enjoyment, the exaggerated
appreciation of trivial favours, which had filled Mrs. Pendleton's life
with a flutter of thankfulness; and while Virginia smoothed the piece of
black brocade on her knee, she might have been the re-arisen pensive
spirit of her mother. Of the two, perhaps because she had ceased to wish
for anything for herself, she was happier than Oliver.

All through dinner, while her soft anxious eyes dwelt on him over the
bowl of pink roses in the centre of the table, he tried hard to throw
himself into her narrow life, to talk only of things in which he felt
that she was interested. Slight as the effort was, he could see her
gratitude in her face, could hear it in the gentle silvery sound of her
voice. When he praised the dinner, she blushed like a girl; when he made
her describe the dress whi