truder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the
necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced
the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality.
Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent
particular--her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its
color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but
careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its
true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.

On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now
before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his
right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his
waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made
them feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder's
mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a
post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair
alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and
distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general,
being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.

He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young
woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and
exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite lost her
color for a moment.

He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open it."

"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as
unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you
have not come out here on my account--for--"

"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with his
cane, and she winced. "Do you agree?" he continued. "It is necessary
that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it
takes time to make up."

"Don't press me--it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more
of it. I can NOT part with it--so there!"

"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the
coffin-stool table. "How much do you get for making these spars?"

"Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing his
work."

"Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly. "How much do you get?"

"Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly.

"Who are you making them for?"

"Mr