ometimes, and win nothing new out
of life, but from which she drew fresh vigour of spirit with every
season.

Many things she taught me, and of them all I best remember the one she
told me last, when I had known her twenty years. She was at that time
fully sixty, with a fine crown of silver hair, a tall, full figure and
piercing dark eyes, for as she grew older her whole regard grew, as it
seemed to me, keener and more commanding, and not, as with some women,
softer and less powerful.

I had been with her all the white winter evening, on one of those
errands of discerning charity that occupied so many of her hours and
thoughts--dangerously many, as we who loved her would often say,
considering that she spent herself unnecessarily upon much for which
others might well have acted deputy. The sun had set early, for it was
midwinter, and white points of winter stars were pricking through the
frozen sky. The snow, iced over with a glistening crust, sent back pale
reflections to the bars of cold green and thin rosy glows that stood for
sunset, and a threatening wind began to rise, that shook down little
icicles from the window ledge and made the stiff, chill branches of the
oaks and beeches creak warningly.

I shivered to myself with pleasure and thanked sincerely the slender
girl that brought hot tea to me and unwrapped my long furs. It was not
my friend's daughter--the youngest of these was now happily married, and
she would have been alone, were it not for the girls that she kept with
her, training and guiding them into some of the wisdom and charm that
distinguished her gracious self--a sort of unchartered school, where
less gifted mothers sought eagerly to install their daughters.

As she accepted the services of two of these, and dispatched by a
messenger some comforts to be sent to the suffering creature we had just
returned from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first
shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy
branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous
home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint.

"Don't you think," I began, "that you have earned a rest from these
expeditions, these insistent girls of yours, this constant
responsibility? You are magnificently strong and well--yes; but even
your vitality has its limits and too many people hang upon you, my dear!
Do you shake us all off for a while and do something for yourself, your
own