lady standing there--she was very much thinner, very much
bent, but still the same--appeared to be looking not at them, but at
their enumeration.

"Comfort!" She opened a pot bubbling on the fire. "Bouillon! A good
five-cent bouillon. Luxury!" She picked up something from a chair,
a handful of new cotton chemises. "Luxury!" She turned back her
bedspread: new cotton sheets. "Did you ever lie in your bed at night
and dream of sheets? Comfort! Luxury! I should say so! And friends! My
dear, look!" Opening her door, pointing to an opposite gallery, to
the yard, her own gallery; to the washing, ironing, sewing women, the
cobbling, chair-making, carpentering men; to the screaming, laughing,
crying, quarreling, swarming children. "Friends! All friends--friends
for fifteen years. Ah, yes, indeed! We are all glad--elated in fact.
As you say. I am restored."

The visitors simply reported that they had found the old lady, and
that she was imbecile; mind completely gone under stress of poverty
and old age. Their opinion was that she should be interdicted.

A DELICATE AFFAIR

"But what does this extraordinary display of light mean?" ejaculated
my aunt, the moment she entered the parlor from the dining-room. "It
looks like the kingdom of heaven in here! Jules! Jules!" she called,
"come and put out some of the light!"

Jules was at the front door letting in the usual Wednesday-evening
visitor, but now he came running in immediately with his own invention
in the way of a gas-stick,--a piece of broom-handle notched at the
end,--and began turning one tap after the other, until the room was
reduced to complete darkness.

"But what do you mean now, Jules?" screamed the old lady again.

"Pardon, madame," answered Jules, with dignity; "it is an accident. I
thought there was one still lighted."

"An accident! An accident! Do you think I hire you to perform
accidents for me? You are just through telling me that it was accident
made you give me both soup and gumbo for dinner today."

"But accidents can always happen, madame," persisted Jules, adhering
to his position.

The chandelier, a design of originality in its day, gave light by what
purported to be wax candles standing each in a circlet of pendent
crystals. The usual smile of ecstatic admiration spread over Jules's
features as he touched the match to the simulated wicks, and lighted
into life the rainbows in the prisms underneath. It was a smile that
did not heighten