own age."

She caught Helen's two hands in hers with genuine kindliness.

She was a plump fair lady with fluffy yellow hair and big blue eyes.
She was dressed in a pink flowered muslin trimmed with girlish frills
and wore a big hat wreathed with nodding roses. Helen was puzzled.
This wasn't Miss Annabel, then; for her mother had said the Misses
Armstrong were both over forty.

"I'm Annabel Armstrong," she said, settling the question. Helen gave
her a second look and saw that Miss Annabel carried signs of maturity
in her face and form, albeit she carried them very blithely indeed.
"And I can't tell you how glad I am you've come. You'll just adore
Algonquin. It's the gayest place on earth, a dance or a tea or a
bridge or some sort of kettle-drum every day. What a love of a dress!
It's the very colour of your eyes, my dear. Come away now; you must
meet Mother. She always takes supper in her own room now, and I must
carry it to her. Our little maid is about as much use as a pussy-cat
and if I'm not in the kitchen every ten minutes to tramp on her tail
she'll go to sleep. Come along!"

She danced away down the hall, Helen following her, feeling extremely
old and prim. Grandma Armstrong's bedroom was at the back of the house
overlooking the orchard and kitchen-garden. She was sitting up in bed,
a very handsome little old lady in cap and ribbons. She gave the
strange girl's hand a gentle pressure.

"Here she is, Muzzy," cried Miss Annabel in an apologetic tone. "It's
too bad you didn't see her sooner, but she was so busy."

"Indeed I generally notice that I am left to the last, when any new
person comes to the house," said Grandma Armstrong in a grieved tone.
"Well, my dear, I am pleased to see the Rev. Walter Murray's son in my
house. You look like him--yes, very much, just the image of him in
fact, only of course he was a man and wore a portmanteau when I knew
him."

Grandma Armstrong's separate faculties were all alert and as keen as
they had ever been in youth. But some strange lack of connection
between her tongue and her memory, seemed to have befallen the old
lady, so that they did not always agree, and she was wont to
intersperse her otherwise quite intelligent conversation with words
having no remotest connection with the context.

"A moustache, you mean, Muzzy dear," said her daughter. "Mother
forgets you know," she added, in a hasty, low apology to Helen.

"Why do you interrupt me, Annabe