is
unworthy repining! There are some in the world that have but one eye,
and some but one leg, and they cannot see or run, and are worse off
than we are, my friend. So think of that, and don't lift your lip at
me, and tell me it is cold, and you want to stay by the fire."

All the blinds were down in the front of the cottage as I unlatched
the garden gate--the gate I had passed through last following
grandmamma's coffin to her grave. I ran round to the back door and
soon found Hephzibah.

Her joy was great to see me there, her only regret being she had not
known I was coming that she might have had the fires lit. They were
all laid, and she soon put a match to them.

With what pride she showed me how she had kept everything! Then she
left me alone, standing in the little drawing-room. It seemed so
wonderfully small to me now. The pieces of brocade still hid the
magenta "suite," but arranged with a prim stiffness they lacked in
our day. Dear Hephzibah! She had been dusting them, and would not
fold them up and put them away in case that I should ever come.

The china all stood as it used, and grandmamma's chair with her
footstool, and the little table near it with her magnifying-glass and
spectacle-case. There were her books, the old French classics, and the
modern yellow backs, her paper-knife still in one, half-cut. I never
realized how happy I had been here, in this little room, a year ago.
How happy, and, oh, how ridiculously young! My work-box stood in its
usual place, a bit of fine embroidery protruding from its lid.

For the first time in my life I sat down in grandmamma's chair. Oh, if
something of her spirit could descend upon me! I tried to think of her
maxims, her wonderful courage, her cheerfulness in all adversities,
her wit, her gayety. I seemed a paltry, feeble creature daring to sit
there, in her _bergere_, and sigh at fate. No, I would grumble no
more. I, too, would be of the race.

How long I mused there I do not know. The fire was burning low.

I went up to my own old room, I must see everything, now I was here.
It struck me with a freezing chill as I opened the door. The fire had
not drawn here, and lay a mass of smouldering sticks and paper in the
narrow grate.

There was my little white bed, cold and narrow. The dressing-table,
with its muslin flounces and cheap, white-bordered mirror. Even the
china tray was there, where, I remember, my jewels lay the night
before my wedding, and close bes