But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, sobbing, with
her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery of the couch. Something
was here deeper than the artistic temperament offended at crude
lithography.

Hetty knew. She had accepted her rôle long ago. How scant the words
with which we try to describe a single quality of a human being! When
we reach the abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the
babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. Figuratively
(let us say), some people are Bosoms, some are Hands, some are Heads,
some are Muscles, some are Feet, some are Backs for burdens.

Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy shoulder; but all her
life people had laid their heads upon it, metaphorically or actually,
and had left there all or half their troubles. Looking at Life
anatomically, which is as good a way as any, she was preordained to
be a Shoulder. There were few truer collar-bones anywhere than hers.

Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet outlived the little
pang that visited her whenever the head of youth and beauty leaned
upon her for consolation. But one glance in her mirror always served
as an instantaneous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the
crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down
the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went
over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia's head to its confessional.

"Go on and tell me, honey," she said. "I know now that it ain't art
that's worrying you. You met him on a ferry-boat, didn't you? Go on,
Cecilia, kid, and tell your--your Aunt Hetty about it."