to her surprise,
that the coarse red fingers, which that day had washed and starched her
linen, were not unhandy even among the paraphernalia of a Boston
lady's toilet.

"You do look beautiful," Eunice said, standing back to admire Ethelyn,
when at last she was dressed. "I have thought Melinda Jones handsome,
but she can't hold a candle to you, nor nobody else I ever seen, except
Miss Judge Miller, in Camden. She do act some like you, with her gown
dragglin' behind her half a yard."

Thus flattered and complimented, Ethelyn shook out her skirts, which
"draggled half a yard behind," and went downstairs to where Mrs. Jones
sat working on Timothy's shirt, and Melinda was crocheting, while Mrs.
Markham, senior, clean and neat, and stiff in her starched, purple
calico, sat putting a patch on a fearfully large hole in the knee of
Andy's pants. As Ethelyn swept into the room there fell a hush upon the
inmates, and Mrs. Jones was almost guilty of an exclamation of surprise.
She had expected something fine, she said--something different from the
Olney quality--but she was not prepared for anything as grand and
queenly as Ethelyn, when she sailed into the room, with her embroidered
handkerchief held so gracefully in her hands, and in response to Mrs.
Markham's introduction, bowed so very low, and slowly, too, her lips
scarcely moving at all, and her eyes bent on the ground. Mrs. Jones
actually ran the needle she was sewing with under her thumb in her
sudden start, while Melinda's crocheting dropped into her lap. She, too,
was surprised, though not as much as her mother. She, like Eunice, had
seen Mrs. Judge Miller, from New York, whose bridal trousseau was
imported from Paris, and whose wardrobe was the wonder of Camden. And
Ethelyn was very much like her, only younger and prettier.

"Very pretty," Melinda thought, while Mrs. Jones fell to comparing her,
mentally, with the deceased Abigail; wondering how Richard, if he had
ever loved the one, could have fancied the other, they were so unlike.

Of course, the mother's heart gave to Abigail the preference for all
that was good and womanly, and worthy of Richard Markham; but Ethelyn
bore off the palm for style, and beauty, too.

"Handsome as a doll, but awfully proud," Mrs. Jones decided, during the
interval in which she squeezed her wounded thumb, and got the needle
again in motion upon Timothy's shirt-sleeve.

Ethelyn was not greatly disappointed in Mrs. Jones and her daugh