white straw matting on the sitting-room floor. Reckless in the
certain possession of twenty dollars a month, she purchased yards
upon yards of turkey red cotton; enough to cover a mattress for the
high-backed settle, for long curtains at the windows, and for
cushions to the rocking-chairs. She knotted white fringes for the
table-covers and curtains, painted the inside of the fireplace red,
put some pots of scarlet geraniums on the window-sills, filled a
wall-pocket with ferns and tacked it over an ugly spot in the
plastering, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of scarlet
wool, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash and red
cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned
mantelshelf, and held pictures of Mr. Reynolds, Miss Elvira Reynolds,
George, Susy, Anna, John, Hazel, Ella, and Rufus Reynolds, her former
charges. When all this was done, she lighted a little blaze on the
hearth, took the red curtains from their bands, let them fall
gracefully to the floor, and sat down in her rocking-chair,
reconciled to her existence for absolutely the first time in her
forty years.

I hope Mrs. Butterfield was happy enough in Paradise to appreciate
and feel Lyddy's joy. I can even believe she was glad to have died,
since her dying could bring such content to any wretched living human
soul. As Lydia sat in the firelight, the left side of her poor face
in shadow, you saw that she was distinctly harmonious. Her figure,
clad in a plain black-and-white print dress, was a graceful, womanly
one. She had beautifully sloping shoulders and a sweet waist.

Her hair was soft and plentiful, and her hands were fine, strong, and
sensitive. This possibility of rare beauty made her scars and burns
more pitiful, for if a cheap chromo has a smirch across its face, we