mall and gray-haired, perhaps looked older than she
was because of the pathetic droop of her shoulders and the worn,
patient expression of her face. But lined and sad though her
countenance was, it told of a sweet and gentle soul and it was lighted
now with a look of pleasure.

"Just look at it, Penelope!" she exclaimed, a little thrill of
enthusiasm in her voice. "I never saw it snow harder, or look
prettier! Isn't it beautiful!"

She turned a pair of soft brown eyes upon a younger woman sitting
beside her in a wheel chair, who put down the book she had been
reading, and sighed as she answered: "Yes, it is beautiful, mother,
very beautiful. But when I look at it I can't help thinking how long
it will be until spring comes again and I can be out in the yard under
the trees."

The mother put out her hand, small and once of the shape that
chirognomists call "the artistic hand," but now wrinkled, bony and
toil-hardened, and rested it gently for a moment upon the mass of
dark, waving hair, already well-threaded with gray, that crowned the
other's head. Her face filled with sympathy but her voice broke
cheerfully upon the silence:

"Oh, it won't be long now, Penelope, and not a bit longer because of
this beautiful storm!"

The figure in the wheel chair bent forward again and looked out upon
the pearly whiteness of the earth. It was a sad travesty of the human
form, undersized, humped and crooked. But it bore a noble head with a
broad, full brow and a strong, intellectual face that had in it
something of the elder woman's sweetness of expression. But in her
brown eyes the other's softness and wistfulness gave place to a
keener, more flashing look that told of a high and soaring spirit. And
in the lines of her face was a hint of possible storminess, though it
was softened by an expression of self-mastery, eloquent of many an
inner battle waged and won.

The window from which they looked commanded one side of their own wide
yard, a vacant block, and beyond that a cross-street. The snow was
feathering down so fast that it gave to the air a milky translucence
through which bulked dimly an occasional traveler on the other
thoroughfare. Penelope's eyes fixed themselves upon one of these vague
shapes.

"Look, mother!" she exclaimed. "Do you see that man just turning the
corner to come this way? It looks like Felix!"

"So it does!" the other cried.

They were both silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the
dim fi