ing--I don't wonder that my mother
loved you."

"Well, you'll always be more than just yourself to me," said Mary.
"You'll always be your mother's baby. And after I get lunch for you
and the men I am going back to the church and ask the blessed Virgin to
intercede for your happiness."

So it was while Mary was at church, and the two men had gone to town
upon some legal matter, that Jean, left alone, wandered through the
house, and always before her flitted the happy ghost of the girl who
had come there to spend her honeymoon. In the great south chamber was
a picture of her mother, and one of her father as they looked at the
time of their marriage. Her mother was in organdie with great balloon
sleeves, and her hair in a Psyche knot. She was a slender little
thing, and the young doctor's picture was a great contrast in its
blondness and bigness. Daddy had worn a beard then, pointed, as was
the way with doctors of his day, and he looked very different, except
for the eyes which had the same teasing twinkle.

The window of this room looked out over the orchard, the orchard which
had been bursting with bloom when the bride came. The trees now were
slim little skeletons, with the faint gold of the western sky back of
them, and there was much snow. Yet so vivid was Jean's impression of
what had been, that she would have sworn her nostrils were assailed by
a delicate fragrance, that her eyes beheld wind-blown petals of white
and pink.

The long mirror reflecting her showed her in her straight frock of dark
blue serge, with the white collars and cuffs. The same mirror had
reflected her mother's organdie. It, too, had been blue, Mary had told
her, but blue with such a difference! A faint forget-me-not shade,
with a satin girdle, and a stiff satin collar!

Two girls, with a quarter of a century between them. Yet the mother
had laughed and loved, and had looked forward to a long life with her
gay big husband. They had had ten years of it, and then there had been
just her ghost to haunt the old rooms.

Jean shivered a little as she went downstairs. She found herself a
little afraid of the lonely darkening house. She wished that Mary
would come.

Curled up in one of the big chairs, she waited. Half-asleep and
half-awake; she was aware of shadow-shapes which came and went. Her
Scotch great-grandfather, the little Irish great-grandmother; her
copper-headed grandfather, his English wife, her own mother, pale and