ut, I do assure you, she's only
twenty. She told me so herself."

"Oh, indeed!" said Grace, prudently choking back the contradiction
which she longed to utter. "I know it seems a good many summers since
I heard of her as a belle at Newport."

"Ah, yes, exactly! You see she went into company, as a young lady,
when she was only thirteen. She told me all about it. Her parents were
very injudicious, and they pushed her forward. She regrets it now. She
knows that it wasn't the thing at all. She's very sensitive to the
defects in her early education; but I made her understand that it was
the _heart_ more than the head that I cared for. I dare say, Gracie,
she'll fall into all our little ways without really knowing; and you,
in point of fact, will be mistress of the house as much as you ever
were. Lillie is delicate, and never has had any care, and will be only
too happy to depend on you. She's one of the gentle, dependent sort,
you know."

To this statement, Grace did not reply. She only began nervously
sweeping together the _debris_ of leaves and flowers which encumbered
the table, on which the newly arranged flower-vases were standing.
Then she arranged the vases with great precision on the mantel-shelf.
As she was doing it, so many memories rushed over her of that room and
her mother, and the happy, peaceful family life that had hitherto been
led there, that she quite broke down; and, sitting down in the chair,
she covered her face, and went off in a good, hearty crying spell.

Poor John was inexpressibly shocked. He loved and revered his sister
beyond any thing in the world; and it occurred to him, in a dim wise,
that to be suddenly dispossessed and shut out in the cold, when one
has hitherto been the first object of affection, is, to make the best
of it, a real and sore trial.

But Grace soon recovered herself, and rose up smiling through her
tears. "What a fool I am making of myself!" she said. "The fact is,
John, I am only a little nervous. You mustn't mind it. You know," she
said, laughing, "we old maids are like cats,--we find it hard to be
put out of our old routine. I dare say we shall all of us be happier
in the end for this, and I shall try to do all I can to make it so.
Perhaps, John, I'd better take that little house of mine on Elm
Street, and set up my tent in it, and take all the old furniture and
old pictures, and old-time things. You'll be wanting to modernize and
make over this house, you know, to su