o busy that they haven't time to think about their
looks."

"Well, if I had a wife," the captain had said, "I'd like to have her
wear bright things. My mother had dimity dresses--there was a pink one,
like a rose, and a green one that looked like the young grass in the
spring, and there was one that made me think of forget-me-nots, or the
sky when there isn't a cloud in it."

Bettina had smiled at him. "How pretty your mother must have been."

"It wasn't that she was so pretty; it was her soft, quiet ways, and
those bright-colored roses. And I've been looking for that kind of woman
ever since."

"If your mother," little Miss Matthews had told him, "had lived in this
day of shirt-waists and short skirts, she'd probably be wearing high
collars and sad colors with the rest of us."

The emphasis with which the little lady had offered her opinion and the
flush on her face had made Bettina look at her with awakened eyes.
"Why--I believe she likes him. She'd be really nice-looking if she'd fix
her hair----"

To-day, as Miss Matthews stopped for a moment at the captain's gate to
admire his sweet peas, she was not even "nice-looking." She was pale and
thin, and had a hoarse cough.

"I'm going home and to bed," she said. "I took cold that day in the
rain, captain, and it hasn't left me since, and I took more cold
yesterday, going to school without my overshoes."

"You come right in, and I'll make you a cup of tea," said the captain,
hospitably. But Miss Matthews refused, wearily.

As she turned away, however, Mrs. Martens came to get the flowers which
were the captain's daily offering for Diana's table, and the little man
extended a beaming invitation to both of them.

"You pick your posies," he said, "and I'll get some tea for you and
bring it right out here. You make her stay, Mrs. Martens; she needs a
rest."

Sophie smiled at the little teacher. "You ought not to be out at all,"
she said, sympathetically.

"School closes in four days," explained little Miss Matthews; "after
that I think I shall fall down and die, but I've got to keep up until
then."

As the two women stood there at the gate together, they presented a
striking contrast: Sophie in her black, modish garments, with the look
upon her face of the woman who has been loved, and who has bloomed
because of it; Miss Matthews, a faded shadow of what she might have been
if love had not passed her by.

"How's Betty?" Miss Matthews asked, as she sat down o