t,
suddenly glancing in the mirror and observing how ashen was her usually
brilliant complexion, she declared against wearing the gray cashmere in
which she was dressed, of a hue so like her face. George must not meet her
thus. She seized her black silk, with which, in spite of remonstrances,
she proceeded to array herself. There was time enough; the carriage must
surely be too early. Alas! for the ripping out of gathers, in the
violence of her haste, and for the loopings of her skirt, not to be
dispensed with! Horses could not be made to do the work of five minutes in
three.

She saw the cars move off without her!

No words were called for. My mother carried a glass of elderberry wine to
the poor girl, and left her alone to her tears. They would do her good.

We ourselves needed rest, after the troubled scene of hurry and
excitement, and we sat down, feeling as if a whirlwind had passed.

"It is beyond my comprehension," said my father, when he came home to
dinner. "I can understand tardiness," he continued, categorically, "as the
result of indolence. Lazy people dread effort and postpone it. There is a
man in my employ who continues to work sometimes after hours. The men tell
me that he is actually too lazy to leave off work and put away his tools.
But Miss Jeannette seems active and energetic."

"She miscalculates, papa," I said. "She always imagines there is plenty of
time until the last minute."

"But herein is the mystery," persisted my father. "Whence this
_uniformity_ of dereliction? Why not sometimes too early and sometimes
just in the right time, instead of always and everywhere late, and making
others late?"

"Poor girl!" said my mother, whose compassion was uppermost. "I pity her
with all my heart; yet it is not a case of life and death. This trial may
be attended with beneficial results. We will hope so."

I am sorry that this hope was apparently not to be realized. The lesson
failed to be read aright. Jeannette recovered her serenity, and resumed
her tardy ways. A yet severer lesson was needed, and it came.

The steamer in which, after an absence of ten or twelve weeks, George
Allibone was to embark for home, was lost, and not a passenger saved.

My father took me at once to my poor stricken friend, in her distant home.
Pale and dumb with grief, yet with tearless eyes, she let us take her
almost lifeless hand. From her bloodless lips came only the low, anguished
cry, "If only I had said farewell