he is always trying to tempt my
appetite. She's the best old soul that evah was. Oh, Miss Sarah, I'm so
glad you came. I haven't had a pah'ty like this for ages. Heah! I'll let
you wiggle the tea-ball in yoah own cup, so that you can make it as
strong as you like, because you're company."

The dimples deepened playfully in her cheeks as she passed the tea-ball
across the table. Miss Sarah smiled, although her eyes felt misty. "You
dear child!" she exclaimed. "That was Amanthis Lloyd all over again. She
never reached out and gave pleasure to other people as if she were
bestowing a favour. She always made it seem as if it were only her own
pleasure which you were enhancing by sharing. You don't know what an
interest I have taken in you for her sake, as I've watched you growing
up here in the Valley. I used to hear remarks about your temper and your
imperious ways, and day after day, as I've watched you ride past the
house beside your grandfather, sitting up in the same straight, haughty
way, I've thought she's well named. She's the Colonel over again.

"But to-day, in this old room, you are startlingly like her in some way,
I can hardly tell what." She glanced up again at the portrait. "Your
eyes look at me in the same understanding sort of way. They almost
unseal the silence of twenty years. I have never said this to any one
else. But I used to look at her sometimes and think that George Eliot
must have meant her when she wrote in her 'Choir Invisible' of one who
could 'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great agony.' She
was that to me. People always used to go to her with their troubles."

Lloyd bent over her cup, her face flushing. "Then I'm so glad you think
I'm even a little bit like her," she said, softly. "Nobody evah told me
that befoah. I've always wanted to be."

The thought gave her a glow of pleasure all through the meal. Long after
Miss Sarah went away, warmed and quickened in heart as well as body, it
lingered with her. Afterward it prompted her to pause before the
portrait with a questioning glance into the clear eyes above her.

"'The cup of strength to other souls in some great agony,'" she
repeated. "And you were that! Oh, I would love to be, too, if I didn't
have to suffer too much first to learn how to sympathize and comfort.
Maybe that is what I am to learn from this wintah's disappointment,--a
way to help othah people beah their disappointments. If I could do
that," she whispered, loo