name for. Such exquisite carving, such
odd figures painted and embroidered on silk, birds the like of which
were never seen on land or sea, dragons that flew, and crawled, and
climbed trees, and disported themselves on waves.
"Oh, it looks like home," cried Cynthia, for the moment forgetting
herself. And she kept sauntering round among the beautiful things, her
heart growing strangely light, and her pulses throbbing with a sort of
joy.
She was almost hidden by a great pile of tapestry. The Indians had found
some secrets of beauty as well as France, if they did make it with
infinite pains. And this was made with the little hand-looms and joined
together so neatly and the colors blended so harmoniously that it was
like a dream. Only the little girl did not like the dragons and strange
animals. She had never seen any real ones like them. They were in the
stories Nalla used to tell.
Then some one else spoke to Miss Winn. "Is your little charge here?" she
asked. "I'm quite anxious to see her. I've called twice on the
Leveretts, and really asked for her once when they said she was quite
ill. But I saw her out in the carriage with--isn't it her uncle? No?
And she's to be very well to do, I've heard. The idea of the Leverett
women undertaking to bring up a child! They're good as gold and some of
the best housekeepers in Salem, but I dare say they'll teach her to knit
stockings, and make bedquilts, and braid rag mats, and do fifty-year-old
things--make a regular little Puritan of her. I knew her mother quite
well before she was married. Doesn't seem as if we were near of an age
and went to school together. But some of the Ornes married in our line.
And I was married when I was seventeen, and now I'm a grandmother. How
the years do fly on! And she had to die out in that heathen land; he
too. Wasn't it odd about sending her here beforehand? I do want to see
her."
"She is somewhere about, interested in all these foreign things." Miss
Winn was not quite sure of the chattering woman. She had learned that
the Leverett ladies were exclusive, whether from inclination or lack of
time. They asked their minister and a few old family friends in to tea
on rare occasions, and then it was cooking and baking and cleaning up
the choice old silver and dusting and polishing, and the next day
clearing up. Everything out of the routine made so much extra work.
Among the few English-speaking people in India there had been a sort of
free and
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