lly's reason for refusing to join could have
been a truly good one. I should add that her most precious possession--a
treasure which accompanied her even if she went away for only one
night's absence--was an heirloom, a little miniature portrait of the old
Molly Stark, painted when that far-off dame must have been scarce more
than twenty. And when each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, New
Hampshire, to pay her established family visit to the last survivors of
her connection who bore the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the
Dunbarton houses pleased her so much as when a certain great-aunt would
take her by the hand, and, after looking with fond intentness at her,
pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the General's wife every
year you live."

"I suppose you mean my nose," Molly would then reply.

"Nonsense, child. You have the family length of nose, and I've never
heard that it has disgraced us."

"But I don't think I'm tall enough for it."

"There now, run to your room, and dress for tea. The Starks have always
been punctual."

And after this annual conversation, Molly would run to her room, and
there in its privacy, even at the risk of falling below the punctuality
of the Starks, she would consult two objects for quite a minute before
she began to dress. These objects, as you have already correctly
guessed, were the miniature of the General's wife and the looking glass.

So much for Miss Molly Stark Wood's descent.

The second reason why she was not a usual girl was her character. This
character was the result of pride and family pluck battling with family
hardship.

Just one year before she was to be presented to the world--not the great
metropolitan world, but a world that would have made her welcome and
done her homage at its little dances and little dinners in Troy and
Rutland and Burlington--fortune had turned her back upon the Woods.
Their possessions had never been great ones; but they had sufficed. From
generation to generation the family had gone to school like gentlefolk,
dressed like gentlefolk, used the speech and ways of gentlefolk, and as
gentlefolk lived and died. And now the mills failed.

Instead of thinking about her first evening dress, Molly found pupils
to whom she could give music lessons. She found handkerchiefs that she
could embroider with initials. And she found fruit that she could
make into preserves. That machine called the typewriter was then in
existence