lucrative as the manufacture of varnish. Externally the house displayed
stern lines of unadorned brick--the custom-made style of Benham in the
first throes of expansion before Mr. Pierce's imagination had been
stirred. Mr. Taylor had bought it as it stood, and his wife had made no
attempt to alter the outside, which was, after all, inoffensively
homely. But the interior was bewildering to Selma's gaze in its
suggestion of cosey comfort. Pretty, tasteful things, many of them
inexpensive knick-knacks of foreign origin--a small picture, a bit of
china, a mediaeval relic--were cleverly placed as a relief to the
conventional furniture. Selma had been used to formalism in household
garniture--to a best room little used and precise with the rigor of wax
flowers and black horse-hair, and to a living room where the effect
sought was purely utilitarian. Her new home, in spite of its colored
glass and iron stag, was arranged in much this fashion, as were the
houses of her neighbors which she had entered.

Selma managed to seat herself on the one straight-backed chair in the
room. From this she was promptly driven by Mrs. Taylor and established
in one corner of a lounge with a soft silk cushion behind her, and
further propitiated by the proffer of a cup of tea in a dainty cup and
saucer. All this, including Mrs. Taylor's musical voice, easy speech,
and ingratiating friendliness, alternately thrilled and irritated her.
She would have liked to discard her hostess from her thought as a light
creature unworthy of intellectual seriousness, but she found herself
fascinated and even thawed in spite of herself.

"I'm glad to have the opportunity really to talk to you," said Mrs.
Taylor. "At the church reunions one is so liable to interruptions. If
I'm not mistaken, you taught school before you were married?"

"For a short time."

"That must have been interesting. It is so practical and definite. My
life," she added deprecatingly, "has been a thing of threads and
patches--a bit here and a bit there."

She paused, but without forcing a response, proceeded blithely to touch
on her past by way of illustration. The war had come just when she was
grown up, and her kin in Maryland were divided on the issue. Her father
had taken his family abroad, but her heart was in the keeping of a young
officer on the Northern side--now her husband. Loss of property and
bitterness of spirit had kept her parents expatriated, and she, with
them, had journe