not see exactly what was to come of that, though, practically. Laura
knew that people always did something; something would be sure to
be done with them. She was not frightened; she was even a little
curious.

A head came up at the corner of the shed behind them, a pair of
shoulders,--high, square, turned forward; a pair of arms, long
thence to the elbows, as they say women's are who might be good
nurses of children; the hands held on to the sides of the steep
steps that led up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was
thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out,
like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never
wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it
struck full upon whatever was there; it struck _through_ many things
that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white,
strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed
easily when she spoke, but the lips closed over them absolutely and
firmly. Yet they were pleasant lips, and had a smile in them that
never went quite out; it lay in all the muscles of the mouth and
chin; it lay behind, in the living spirit that had moulded to itself
the muscles.

This was Luclarion.

"Your Aunt Oldways and Mrs. Oferr have come. Hurry in!"

Now Mrs. Oldways was only an uncle's wife; Mrs. Oferr was their
father's sister. But Mrs. Oferr was a rich woman who lived in New
York, and who came on grand and potent, with a scarf or a pair of
shoe-bows for each of the children in her big trunk, and a hundred