mine,
it is applied morality. Why, Sophy, you're _stunning_! Here, sit
down: I have to loosen up that hair a bit."

"Now!" said she, when she had critically surveyed her finished work
and found it good, "Now, Sophy Smith, you are no longer efficient
and utilitarian; you are effective and decorative, thank heaven!"

Really, clothes do make a tremendous difference, after all. Why,
I--Well, I no longer looked root-bound.

"I said you'd put out new leaves and begin to bloom!" Alicia
exulted. We bowed to the Sophy in the glass, a small and slender
person with quantities of fair hair, a round white chin, and steady
blue eyes. For the rest, she had a short nose and the rather wide
mouth of a boy. She wasn't what you'd call a beautiful person, but
she wasn't displeasing to the eye.

"_Vale_, plain Sophy Smith!" cried Alicia, "_Ave_, dear Lady of
Hynds House! We who about to live salute you!"

The Westmacotes were delighted with Alicia. The Head had noticed her
just about as much as a Head notices a pale file-clerk in a white
shirt-waist and a black skirt. This radiant rose-maiden--"little
Dawn-rose," old Riedriech called her--was new to him; and so, I
fancy, was a Miss Smith in such a frock as I was wearing. He, as
well as his wife and Miss Phelps-Parsons, accepted us at our
face-value, with the background of Hynds House outlining us.

Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons was a lady with a soul. She said she
had psychic consciousness and a clear green aura, and that she had
been an Egyptian priestess in Thebes, in the time of Sesostris. In
proof of this she showed us a fine little bronze Osiris holding a
whip in one hand and the ankh in the other. ("My dear, the moment I
saw him, I knew I had once prayed to him!") and she always wore a
scarab ring. She had bought both in an antique-shop just off
Washington Street. I thought this rather a far cry from Thebes,
myself, but The Author insisted that if a Theban vestal of the time
of Sesostris _had_ to reincarnate, she would naturally and
inevitably come to life a Boston one.

The Author hadn't taken any too kindly to the notion of other people
coming to Hynds House. He grumbled that he had hoped he had at last
found a quiet haven, a place that fitted him like a glove; he
protested piercingly against having it "cluttered up with
uninteresting, gobbling, gabbling, ordinary people."

"You came too late. You should have been here with Great-Aunt
Sophronisba," Alicia told him, tartly