It is the sad fate of little women in general to grow too fat and
to be born with short legs. Emily's slim finely-strung figure
spoke for itself as to the first of these misfortunes, and
asserted its happy freedom from the second, if she only walked
across a room. Nature had built her, from head to foot, on a
skeleton-scaffolding in perfect proportion. Tall or short matters
little to the result, in women who possess the first and foremost
advantage of beginning well in their bones. When they live to old
age, they often astonish thoughtless men, who walk behind them in
the street. "I give you my honor, she was as easy and upright as
a young girl; and when you got in front of her and looked--white
hair, and seventy years of age."

Francine approached Emily, moved by a rare impulse in her
nature--the impulse to be sociable. "You look out of spirits,"
she began. "Surely you don't regret leaving school?"

In her present mood, Emily took the opportunity (in the popular
phrase) of snubbing Francine. "You have guessed wrong; I do
regret," she answered. "I have found in Cecilia my dearest friend
at school. And school brought with it the change in my life which
has helped me to bear the loss of my father. If you must know
what I was thinking of just now, I was thinking or my aunt. She
has not answered my last letter--and I'm beginning to be afraid
she is ill."

"I'm very sorry," said Francine.

"Why? You don't know my aunt; and you have only known me since