white, perhaps, as Miss Farrel's, but quite lovely in shape. She
walked glidingly across the room, looking over her shoulder at the
trail of lace. She was unspeakably happy. She had a lover, and she
was a woman in a fine gown for the first time in her life. The gown
was not her own, but she would have one like it. She did not realize
that this gown was not hers. She was fairly radiant with the
possession of her woman's birthright, this poor farmer's daughter, in
whom the instincts of her kind were strong. She glided across the
room many times. She surveyed herself in the glass. Every time she
looked she seemed to herself more beautiful, and there was something
good and touching in this estimation of herself, for she seemed to
see herself with her lover's eyes as well as her own.

Finally she sat down in Miss Farrel's rocker; she crossed her knees
and viewed with delight the fleecy fall of lace to the floor. Then
she fell to dreaming, and her dreams were good. In that gown of
fashion she dreamed the dreams of the life to which the women of her
race were born. She dreamed of her good housewifery; she dreamed of
the butter she would make; she dreamed of her husband coming home to
meals all ready and well cooked. She dreamed, underneath the other
dreams, of children coming home. She had no realization of the time
she sat there. At last she started and turned white. She had heard a
key turn in the lock. Then Miss Farrel entered the room--Miss Eliza
Farrel, magnificent in pale gray, with a hat trimmed with roses
crowning her blond head. Hannah cowered. She tried to speak, but only
succeeded in making a sound as if she were deaf and dumb.

Then Miss Farrel spoke. There was a weary astonishment and amusement
in her tone, but nothing whatever disturbed or harsh. "Oh, is it you,
Hannah?" she said.