he most of them. Then I have had much
womanly pride, and that is a powerful tonic.

For instance, years ago, when my best lamp of life went out, so to
speak, I lit all my candles and kept my path. I took just as much
pains with my hair and my dress, and if I was unhappy I kept it out of
evidence on my face. I let my heart ache and bleed, but I would have
died before I wrinkled my forehead and dimmed my eyes with tears and let
everybody else know. That was about the time when I met Ned Temple, and
he fell so madly in love with me, and threatened to shoot himself if I
would not marry him. He did not. Most men do not. I wonder if he placed
me when he heard of my anticipated coming. Probably he did not. They
have probably alluded to me as dear old Aunt Elizabeth, and when he met
me (I was staying at Harriet Munroe's before she was married) nobody
called me Elizabeth, but Lily. Miss Elizabeth Talbert, instead of
Lily Talbert, might naturally set him wrong. Everybody here calls me
Elizabeth. Outside Eastridge I am Lily. I dare say Ned Temple has not
dreamed who I am. I hear that he is quite brilliant, although the poor
fellow must be limited as to his income. However, in some respects it
must be just as well. It would be a great trial to a man with a large
income to have a wife like Mrs. Temple, who could make no good use of
it. You might load that poor soul with crown jewels and she would
make them look as if she had bought them at a department store for
ninety-eight cents. And the way she keeps her house must be maddening, I
should think, to a brilliant man. Fancy the books on the table being
all arranged with the large ones under the small ones in perfectly even
piles! I am sure that he has his meals on time, and I am equally sure
that the principal dishes are preserves and hot biscuits and cake. That
sort of diet simply shows forth in Mrs. Temple and her children. I am
sure that his socks are always mended, but I know that he always wipes
his feet before he enters the house, that it has become a matter of
conscience with him; and those exactions are to me pathetic. These
reflections are uncommonly like the popular conception as to how an
old-maid aunt should reflect, had she not ceased to exist. Sometimes I
wish she were still existing and that I carried out her character to the
full. I am not at all sure but she, as she once was, coming here, would
not have brought more happiness than I have. I must say I thought so
when