light and wavy, clear to the parting; she had a luxuriant mass of it,
and coiled it about her shapely head, fastening it with a beautifully
carved shell comb. Her eyes were very dark for blue, large and
expressive; she had teeth like pearls, and a mouth, whose tender
outlines were a study for a painter. She seemed to me a living,
breathing picture, and I almost coveted the grace which was so natural
to her, and hated the contrast presented by our two faces. She called my
complexion pure olive, and toyed with "my night-black hair" (her own
expression), sometimes winding it about her fingers as if to coax it to
curl, and then again braiding it wide with many strands, and doing it up
in a fashion unusual with me. She was a little below the medium size, I,
a little above, and though only turned nineteen, I know I looked much
older than she. We were fast friends, and I could do her bidding ever
and always, for her word was a friendly law, and I am sure no family
ever had so charming a boarder. She bought gingham, and made dresses
exactly alike for herself and me, made some long house-aprons, as she
called them, and would never consent to sit down by herself but helped
about the house daily until all the work was done, then changed her
dress when I changed mine, and kept herself close, to us, body and
soul--for she seemed in one sense our ward, in another our help, making
her doubly dear, and I many times blessed the providence that brought
her to us just as we were losing Hal. She was sensitive, but never
morbidly so, apparently anxious to have every one about her happy, and I
never saw the airs that I expected her to assume, for she was ever
smiling and happy in her manner.

As the days passed over us, we took long walks in the woods together,
and she unfolded to me leaf by leaf of her life history.

The deep love she had borne her husband remained unchanged--and nightly,