ts, and as they did so presented a placid and pleasing sight. They
entered their drawing-room with the intention of brewing a cup of tea,
and drinking it in calm sociability in the twilight. But as they entered
the room they became aware of the presence of a lady, who was already
seated at their tea-table, regarding their old Wedgewood with the air of
a connoisseur.

There were a number of peculiarities about this intruder. To begin with,
she was hatless, quite as if she were a habitue; of the house, and
was costumed in a prim lilac-colored lawn of the style of two decades
past. But a greater peculiarity was the resemblance this lady bore to a
faded daguerrotype. If looked at one way, she was perfectly discernible;
if looked at another, she went out in a sort of blur. Notwithstanding
this comparative invisibility, she exhaled a delicate perfume of sweet
lavender, very pleasing to the nostrils of the Misses Boggs, who stood
looking at her in gentle and unprotesting surprise.

"I beg your pardon," began Miss Prudence, the younger of the Misses
Boggs, "but--"

But at this moment the Daguerrotype became a blur, and Miss Prudence
found herself addressing space. The Misses Boggs were irritated. They
had never encountered any mysteries in Iowa. They began an impatient
search behind doors and portieres, and even under sofas, though
it was quite absurd to suppose that a lady recognizing the merits of the
Carew Wedgewood would so far forget herself as to crawl under a sofa.

When they had given up all hope of discovering the intruder, they saw
her standing at the far end of the drawing-room critically examining a
water-color marine. The elder Miss Boggs started toward her with stern
decision, but the little Daguerrotype turned with a shadowy smile,
became a blur and an imperceptibility.

Miss Boggs looked at Miss Prudence Boggs.

"If there were ghosts," she said, "this would be one."

"If there were ghosts," said Miss Prudence Boggs, "this would be the
ghost of Lydia Carew."

The twilight was settling into blackness, and Miss Boggs nervously lit
the gas while Miss Prudence ran for other tea-cups, preferring, for
reasons superfluous to mention, not to drink out of the Carew china that
evening.

The next day, on taking up her embroidery frame, Miss Boggs found a
number of oldfashioned cross-stitches added to her Kensington. Prudence,
she knew, would never have degraded herself by taking a cross-stitch,
and the parlor-mai