awing-room or parlor in which the massive furniture had not been
changed during the twenty years and more that Miss Betsey had lived
there; the other the living room where the lady sat, and ate, and
received her friends and where now a bright fire was burning in the
Franklin stove, and the kettle was singing upon the hob, while a little
round Swiss table was standing on the Persian rug before the fire, and
on it the delicate cup and saucer, and sugar bowl, and creamer, which
Miss McPherson had herself bought at Sevres years ago, when the life she
looked forward to was very different from what had actually come to her.
Possibly the memory of the day when she walked through those brilliant
rooms at Sevres, and bought her costly wares, softened a little her
somewhat harsh, uncompromising nature, for there was a very womanly
expression on her usually severe face as she sipped her favorite oolong,
and gazed dreamily into the fire, where she seemed to see again the
sweet face of the child who had talked to her on the shores of Cardigan
Bay, and whose innocent prattle had by turns amused, and interested, and
enraged her. And, as she gazed she thought:

"Yes, Grey was right. Why didn't I take the little thing in my arms and
bring her home with me? To think of her being hungry, when there is
enough wasted in this house every day to feed her! And why did I so far
forget myself as to talk as I did to-day--I, who am usually so silent
with regard to my affairs! Why need I have told them that Archie's wife
was a trollop. I suppose the venom is still rankling in me for the name
she called me, 'Old Sour Krout!'" and Miss Betsey smiled grimly as she
remembered all, the child upon the terrace had said to her that summer
morning three years ago, "She is truthful, at all events," she
continued, "and I like that, and wish I had her here. She would be a
comfort to me, now that I am old, and the house has no young life in it,
except my cats. There's the bedroom at the end of the hall, opening from
my room. She could have that, and I should be so happy fitting it up for
her. I'd trim it with blue, and have hangings at the bed, and--"

Here she stopped, seized with a sudden inspiration, and summoning the
housemaid, Flora, to her, she said:

"Remove the tea things and bring my writing-desk."

Flora obeyed, and her mistress was soon deep in the construction of a
letter to Archibald McPherson, to whom she made the proposition that he
should bri