last spring. Set up! Tr-r-r-r-e-e-ee! I can do that myself. I don't
believe you've got an octave in you. Poh!"

Mrs. Ripwinkley came down from the country with a bonnet on that
had a crown, and with not a particle of a chignon. When she was
married, twenty-five years before, she wore a French twist,--her
hair turned up in waves from her neck as prettily as it did away
from her forehead,--and two thick coiled loops were knotted and
fastened gracefully at the top. She had kept on twisting her hair
so, all these years; and the rippling folds turned naturally under
her fingers into their places. The color was bright still, and it
had not thinned. Over her brows it parted richly, with no fuzz or
crimp; but a sweet natural wreathing look that made her face young.
Mrs. Ledwith had done hers over slate-pencils till she had burned it
off; and now tied on a friz, that came low down, for fashion's sake,
and left visible only a little bunch of puckers between her eyebrows
and the crowsfeet at the corners. The back of her head was weighted
down by an immense excrescence in a bag. Behind her ears were bare
places. Mrs. Ledwith began to look old-young. And a woman cannot get
into a worse stage of looks than that. Still, she was a showy
woman--a good exponent of the reigning style; and she was
handsome--she and her millinery--of an evening, or in the street.

When I began that last paragraph I meant to tell you what else Mrs.
Ripwinkley brought with her, down out of the country and the old
times; but hair takes up a deal of room. She brought down all her
dear old furniture. That is, it came after her in boxes, when she
had made up her mind to take the Aspen Street house.

"Why, that's the sofa Oliver used to lie down on when he came home