gns and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low,
comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a
fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and
other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and
hanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of
Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool
or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.
On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods
wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so
pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose
surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation
of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art.
In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a
palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere:
Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His
Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all
kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano,
with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great
plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and
around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and
quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly
devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with
foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.

But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within
or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features,
of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is
receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the
garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an
expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of
a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and
rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with
native grace.

Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can
come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of
a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up w