ng to the
Little Gray Lady.

As I look through its contents my eyes resting on the finger of a glove,
the end of a lace scarf, and the handle of an old fan, my mind goes back
to the last time she wore them. Then I begin turning everything upside
down, lifting the corner of this incident, prying under that no bit of
talk, recalling what he said and who told of it (I shall have the whole
drawer empty before I get through), and whose fault it was that the
match was broken off, and why she, of all women in the world, should
have remained single all those years. Why, too, she should have lost her
identity, so to speak, and become the Little Gray Lady.

And yet no sobriquet could better express her personality: She was
little--a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands;
she was gray--a soft, silver gray--too gray for her forty years (and
this fragment begins when she was forty); and she was a lady in every
beat of her warm heart; in every pressure of her white hand; in her
voice, speech--in all her thoughts and movements.

She lived in the quaintest of old houses fronted by a brick path
bordered with fragrant box, which led up to an old-fashioned porch,
its door brightened by a brass knocker. This, together with the
knobs, steps, and slits of windows on each side of the door, was kept
scrupulously clean by old Margaret, who had lived with her for years.

But it is her personality and not her surroundings that lingers in my
memory. No one ever heard anything sweeter than her voice; in and nobody
ever looked into a lovelier face, even if there were little hollows in
the cheeks and shy, fanlike wrinkles lurking about the corners of her
lambent brown eyes. Nor did her gray hair mar her beauty. It was not
old, dry, and withered--a wispy gray. (That is not the way it happened.)
It was a new, all-of-a-sudden gray, and in less than a week--so
Margaret once told me--bleaching its brown gold to silver. But the
gloss remained, and so did the richness of the folds, and the wealth and
weight of it.

Inside the green-painted door, with its white trim and brass knocker and
knobs, there was a narrow hall hung with old portraits, opening into a
room literally all fireplace. Here there were gouty sofas, and five or
six big easy-chairs ranged in a half-circle, with arms held out as
if begging somebody to sit in them; and here, too, was an embroidered
worsted fire screen that slid up and down a standard, to shield one's
fa