the fragile kind that breaks early, and her wan, aristocratic features
had settled into the downward droop which comes to the faces of people
who habitually "expect the worst."

"I know, Jane, I know," murmured Mrs. Carr, dropping her thimble as she
nervously tried to hasten her sewing. "But don't you think it would be a
comfort, dear, to have the advice of a man about Charley? Won't you let
me send Marthy for your Cousin Jimmy Wrenn?"

"Oh, mother, I couldn't. It would kill me to have everybody know I'm
unhappy!" wailed Jane, breaking down.

"But everybody knows anyway, Jane," said Gabriella, sticking the point
of her scissors into a strip of buckram, for she was stiffening the
bottom of the skirt after the fashion of the middle 'nineties.

"Of course I'm foolishly sensitive," returned Jane, while she lifted the
baby from her lap and placed him in a pile of cushions by the deep arm
of the sofa, where he sat imperturbably gazing at the blue sky and the
red wall from which the sparrow had flown. "You can never understand my
feelings because you are so different."

"Gabriella is not married," observed Mrs. Carr, with sentimental
finality. "But I'm sure, Jane--I'm just as sure as I can be of anything
that it wouldn't do a bit of harm to speak to Cousin Jimmy Wrenn. Men
know so much more than women about such matters."

In her effort to recover her thimble she dropped her spool of thread,
which rolled under the sofa on which Jane was sitting, and while she
waited for Gabriella to find it, she gazed pensively into the almost