wo with his hand,
and said: "She always does that. You can't tell just what it lacks, but
it does lack something until you've done that--you can see it yourself
after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of
it. It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after
she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her fix all these
things so much that I can do them all just her way, though I don't know
the law of any of them. But she knows the law. She knows the why and the
how both; but I don't know the why; I only know the how."

He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom
as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted
floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and
pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand,
with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish,
and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white for
one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. So
my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words:

"All her work; she did it all herself--every bit. Nothing here that
hasn't felt the touch of her hand. Now you would think--But I mustn't
talk so much."

By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail
of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place,
where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and
I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that
there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover
for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by
furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right
track, being eager to gratify him. I failed several times, as I could
see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last I knew I
must be looking straight at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing
in invisible waves from him. He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his
hands together, and cried out:

"That's it! You've found it. I knew you would. It's her picture."

I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and
did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case. It
contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it
seemed to me, that I had ever seen. The man drank the admiration from my
face, and was f