cession of soul which can cover more than earthly
spaces. To the young girl with her scared, indignant eyes the older
woman seemed actually living and breathing under new conditions in
some strange element.

"Flora, Flora, where be you?" Mrs. Maxwell called out in the entry.

They heard her climbing the chamber stairs; but she soon came into
the parlor with a little glass of currant wine.

"Here, you'd better drink this right down," she said to Lois; "it
won't hurt you. I don't see where Flora is, for my part. She ain't
upstairs. Drink it right down."

Lois drank the little glass of wine without any demur. Her mother
glanced sharply at the album as she took it.

"I can't imagine where Flora is," said Mrs. Maxwell.

"I saw somebody go out of the yard a while ago," said Lois.

"You did? Was she kind of stout with light hair?"

"Yes, 'm."

"It was Flora then. I don't see where she's gone. Mebbe she went down
to the store to get some more thread for her tidy. Now I guess you'll
feel better."

"Who's this a picture of?" asked Mrs. Field.

"Hold it up. Oh, that's Mis' John Robbins! She's dead. Yes, I guess
Flora must have gone after that thread. She'll show you how to make
that tidy, Lois, if you want to learn; it's real handsome. I guess
she'll be here before long."

But when Mrs. Maxwell had shown her guests all the photographs in the
album and a book of views in Palestine, and it was nearly four
o'clock, Flora still had not come.

"Do you see anybody comin'?" Mrs. Maxwell kept asking Lois at the
window.

Before Mrs. Maxwell spoke, a nervous vibration seemed to seize upon
her whole body. She cleared her throat sharply. It was like a
premonitory click of machinery before motion, and Lois waited, numb
with fear, for what she might say. Suppose she should suddenly
suspect, and should cry out, "Is this woman here Esther Maxwell?"

But all Mrs. Maxwell's thoughts were on her absent daughter. "I don't
see where she is," said she. "Here she's got to make cream-tarter
biscuits for tea, an' it's 'most time for the folks to come."

"I'm afraid we came too early," said Mrs. Field.

"Oh, no, you didn't," returned Mrs. Maxwell politely. "It ain't half
as pleasant goin' as late as they do here when they're asked out to
tea. You don't see anything of 'em; they begin to eat jest as soon as
they come, an' it seems as if that was all they come for. The
old-fashioned way of goin' right after dinner, an' takin' your
sew