yes
set deeply under white eyebrows. Her hair is white and drawn up
tightly to a knot at the top of her head. She wears no cap and
dresses always in black; very plain, with, in the daytime, a collar
of white lawn turning over a black silk stock and bow, such as
young girls wear, and, in the evening, a little fichu of white net,
very often washed, and thin and starchy. And since her skirts are
always very short, and her figure so square, she makes one think of
a funny little girl as well as of an old woman. She comes from the
State of Maine, and she remembers a striving, rough existence in a
little town on the edge of wildernesses. She is a very distant
relation of my guardian's. My guardian's maternal grandparents were
Spanish and lived in New Orleans, and a sister of Senor Bastida's
(Bastida was the name of my guardian's grandfather)--married a New
Englander, from Vermont--and that New Englander was an uncle of
Mrs. Talcott's--do you follow!--her uncle married my guardian's
aunt, you see. Mrs. Talcott, in her youth, stayed sometimes in New
Orleans, and dearly loved the beautiful Dolores Bastida who left
her home to follow Pavelek Okraska. Poor Dolores Okraska had many
sorrows. Her husband was not a good husband and her parents died.
She was very unhappy and before her baby came--she was in Poland
then,--she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married,
too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left
everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage--and what it must
have been in those days!--imagine!--to join her unfortunate
relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott:
'_Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois._' She stayed with Dolores
Okraska until she died a little time after. She brought up her
child. They were in great want; my guardian remembers that she had
sometimes not enough to eat. When she was older and had already
become famous, some relatives of the Bastidas heard of her and
helped; but those were years of great struggle for Mrs. Talcott;
and it is so strange to think of that provincial, simple American
woman with her rustic ways and accent, living in Cracow and Warsaw,
and Vienna, and steadily doing what she had set herself to do. She
speaks French with a most funny accent even yet, though she spen