assured that "she never meant any harm." The secrets of the town flowed
through her mind as grist flows through a mill, and though she was
entirely without malice, she contrived, in the most innocent manner, to
do an incalculable amount of injury. Possessing a singularly active
intelligence, and having reached middle-age without acquiring sufficient
concentration to enjoy books, she directed a vigorous, if casual,
understanding toward the human beings among whom she lived. She knew
everything that it was possible to know about the people who lived in
Franklin Street, and yet her mind was so constituted that she never by
any chance knew it correctly. Though she was not old, she had already
passed into a proverb. To receive any statement with the remark, "You
have heard that from Bessie Spencer," was to cast doubt upon it.

"You don't think I'm getting any stouter, do you, Miss Lancaster?" she
inquired dubiously, with her hands on her hips and her eyes measuring
the dimensions of her waist. "I'm making up my mind to try one of those
B. and T. corsets that Mrs. Murray is wearing. She told me it reduced
her waist at least three inches."

"Oh, you aren't like Mrs. Murray--she didn't measure a fraction under
thirty inches," replied Miss Lancaster, with her patient politeness.
Then, after a pause, which Mrs. Spencer's nimble wit filled with a story
about the amazing number of mint juleps Mrs. Murray was seen to drink at
the White Sulphur Springs last summer, Florrie exclaimed eagerly:

"Why, there is Gabriella! Won't you get her for us, Miss Lancaster?"

Near one of the long windows, beyond which large greenish flies were
buzzing around the branch of a mulberry tree in the alley, Gabriella was
trying a purple hat on a prim-looking lady who regarded herself in the