r her speak of Mrs. Langdon as 'Sue'! If you
should see her once,--" turning to Bert, who sat beside her,--"you would
appreciate it. She is almost a fierce-looking old lady, and she says the
most startlingly frank things if she chooses. I don't believe any
ordinary person could help being a little afraid of Mrs. Langdon, but
Madam Kittredge seems to think her a delicious joke. But I started to
tell about the present. You see, this Matty is all alone in the world.
She never married and she hasn't much money, and she just loves pretty
things, especially pretty colors. And so Madam Kittredge is sending her
a rainbow basket. It ought to have seemed pathetic to see her handling
the colored things and hear her telling about the pleasure she was sure
her friend would take in them, when she couldn't see them herself, but
somehow it wasn't. She doesn't seem to think of herself at all, and so
she doesn't make other people. She said she made excellent use of her
sight while she had it, and can picture everything clearly now. The
basket itself was beautiful, a big green sweet-grass scrap basket, with
a great green bow. And inside were six parcels, each tied with a bow of
ribbon, so that all the rainbow shades are there. The friend is to draw
one each day for a week. Mrs. Kittredge undid them and let me look. She
says she likes the feel of the soft paper and ribbon. First was a little
red rose bush in a pot--"

"Is she going to send the thing that way? How can she?"

"I asked, myself, and she smiled and said she allowed herself some
extravagances, and one was to carry out her little ideas like that
without minding if they did cost rather more doing it her way. She said
her friend would enjoy the rose ten times as much coming that way as she
would if it were ordered from a Milwaukee florist, so she's sending it.
I like her independent spirit!"

"It might take an independent fortune as well," remarked Dr. Harlow,
"but Madam Kittredge is fortunate enough to have that, or its
equivalent, and she uses a good proportion of it in conventional
charities, so she is safe from criticism if she chooses to assist the
express companies. Perhaps she's a stockholder in one, for all I know!
What did she have for orange, Alice?"

"A box of tangerines, with those tiny, tiny ones like doll oranges; I
forget what you call them. They looked so pretty in a nest of green. The
yellow parcel was a little sunset picture, only a little colored
photograph,