although its natural tendency lay in another direction than towards
literature) so fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of
a woman, just on the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a
combination of features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful,
even if some fastidious persons might pronounce them a little
deficient in softness and delicacy. But we find enough of those
attributes everywhere. Preferable--by way of variety, at least--was
Zenobia's bloom, health, and vigor, which she possessed in such
overflow that a man might well have fallen in love with her for their
sake only. In her quiet moods, she seemed rather indolent; but when
really in earnest, particularly if there were a spice of bitter
feeling, she grew all alive to her finger-tips.

"I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile
beamed warmth upon us all; "so I take the part of hostess for to-day,
and welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests,
too, at supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and
sisters, and begin our new life from daybreak."

"Have we our various parts assigned?" asked some one.

"Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia, with her mellow,
almost broad laugh,--most delectable to hear, but not in the least
like an ordinary woman's laugh,--"we women (there are four of us here
already) will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a
matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,--to
wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep,--and, at our idler intervals,
to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing,--these, I suppose, must
be feminine occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when
our individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be