present. My wife pronounced her the ideal mother of a family, and just
what the wife of such a man as Cyrus Talbert ought to be, but no doubt
because Mrs. Talbert's characteristics were not so salient as her
mother's, my wife was less definitely descriptive of her.

From time to time, it seemed that there was a sister of Mr. Talbert's
who visited in the family, but was now away on one of the many other
visits in which she passed her life. She was always going or coming
somewhere, but at the moment she was gone. My wife inferred from the
generation to which her brother belonged that she had long been a lady
of that age when ladies begin to be spoken of as maiden. Mrs. Talbert
spoke of her as if they were better friends than sisters-in-law are apt
to be, and said that she was to be with them soon, and she would bring
her with her when she returned my wife's call. From the general
impression in Eastridge we gathered that Miss Talbert was not without
the disappointment which endears maiden ladies to the imagination, but
the disappointment was of a date so remote that it was only matter of
pathetic hearsay, now. Miss Talbert, in her much going and coming, had
not failed of being several times in Europe. She especially affected
Florence, where she was believed to have studied the Tuscan School to
unusual purpose, though this was not apparent in any work of her own.
We formed the notion that she might be uncomfortably cultured, but when
she came to call with Mrs. Talbert afterward, my wife reported that you
would not have thought, except for a remark she dropped now and then,
that she had ever been out of her central New York village, and so far
from putting on airs of art, she did not speak of any gallery abroad,
or of the pensions in which she stayed in Florence, or the hotels in
other cities of Italy where she had stopped to visit the local schools
of painting.