s in her youth
was still hers although everybody could not see it. Uncle Billy could
see it and Jeff Bucknor glimpsed it, as his old cousin stepped from
her dingy coach. He had never realized before that Cousin Ann Peyton
had lines and proportions that must always be beautiful--a set of the
head, a slope of shoulder, a length of limb, a curve of wrist and a
turn of ankle. The old purple poke bonnet might have been a diadem, so
high did she carry her head; and she floated along in the midst of her
voluminous skirts like a belle of the sixties--which she had been and
still was in the eyes of her devoted old servant.

Miss Peyton wore hoop skirts. Where she got them was often
conjectured. Surely she could not be wearing the same ones she had
worn in the sixties and everybody knew that the articles were no
longer manufactured. Big Josh had declared on one occasion when some
of the relatives had waxed jocose on the subject of Cousin Ann and her
style of dress, that she had bought a gross of hoop skirts cheap at
the time when they were going out of style and had them stored in his
attic--but then everybody knew that Big Josh would say anything that
popped into his head and then swear to it and Little Josh would back
him up.

"By heck, there's no room in the attic for trunks," he had insisted.
"Hoop skirts everywhere! Boxes of 'em! Barrels of 'em! Hanging from
the rafters like Japanese lanterns! Standing up in the corners like
ghosts scaring a fellow to death! I can't keep servants at all because
of Cousin Ann Peyton's buying that gross of hoop skirts. Little Josh
will bear me out in this."

And Little Josh would, although the truth of the matter was that
Cousin Ann had only one hoop skirt, and it was the same she had worn
in the sixties. Inch by inch its body had been renewed to reclaim it
from the ravages of time until not one iota of the original garment
was left. Here a tape and there a wire had been carefully changed, but
always the hoop kept its original form. The spirit of the sixties
still breathed from it and it enveloped Miss Ann as in olden days.

CHAPTER III

Cousin Ann Is Affronted

Mrs. Bucknor stood aside while Uncle Billy and Jeff unpacked the
carriage but as the visitor emerged she came forward. "How do you do,
Cousin Ann?" she said, trying to put some warmth in her remark. "Have
you driven far?"

Cousin Ann leaned over stiffly and gave her hostess a perfunctory peck
on her cheek. "We left Co