"Prinkin'--and lookin' that beautiful ye wouldn't
know her. But the width and the thickness of
her"--here the wrinkled fingers measured the increase
with a half circle in the air--"and the way
she's plumped out--not in one place, but all over--
well, I tell ye, ye'd be astonished! She knows it,
too, bless her heart! I don't blame her. Let her
git all the comfort she kin when she's young--that's
the time for laughin'--the cryin' always comes
later."

No part of Martha's rhapsody over Lucy described
Jane. Not in her best moments could she have been
called beautiful--not even to-night when Lucy's
home-coming had given a glow to her cheeks and a
lustre to her eyes that nothing else had done for
months. Her slender figure, almost angular in its
contour with its closely drawn lines about the hips
and back; her spare throat and neck, straight arms,
thin wrists and hands--transparent hands, though
exquisitely wrought, as were those of all her race
--all so expressive of high breeding and refinement,
carried with them none of the illusions of
beauty. The mould of the head, moreover, even
when softened by her smooth chestnut hair, worn
close to her ears and caught up in a coil behind, was
too severe for accepted standards, while her features
wonderfully sympathetic as they were, lacked the
finer modeling demanded in perfect types of female
loveliness, the eyebrows being almost straight, the