no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to
grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must
grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she
laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself
by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken
life hard. Another glance into the glass revealed another fact: her neck
was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a
suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars
and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide
Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she _was_ coming to
a hard place in her life. She had believed--oh, how much in vain!--that
she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here
there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it
was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The
acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something. She
remembered the remark of an old lady, who was friendless and poor: "The
hardest time of my life was between forty and forty-five; I had to accept
several bitter facts that after became easier to bear." Prudence Pomeroy
looked at herself, then looked up to God and accepted, submissively, even
cheerfully, his fact that she had begun to grow old, and then, she
dressed herself for a walk and with her sun-umbrella and a volume of
poems started out for her tramp along the road and through the fields to
find her little friend Marjorie. The china plate and pathetic note last
night had moved her strangely. Marjorie was in the beginning of things.
What was her life worth if not to help such as Marjorie live a worthier
life than her own two score years had been?

A face flushed with the long walk looked in at the window upon Marjorie
asleep. The child was sitting near the open window in a wooden rocker
with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground
sprinkled over with butterflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown
back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting
in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had
seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about
her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling
had abated but the discolored spot was plainly visible; her lips were
sl