coldly.

"I never have either," retorted Isabel, "except when I've been invited
to clean other people's houses."

There was something so incongruous in the idea of Isabel cleaning a
house that Rose laughed and the awkward moment quickly passed.

"Look," said Isabel, again.

Rose took it from her hand--a lovely miniature framed in brilliants. A
sweet, old-fashioned face was pictured upon the ivory in delicate
colours--that of a girl in her early twenties, with her smooth, dark
hair drawn back over her ears. A scarf of real lace was exquisitely
painted upon the dark background of her gown. The longing eyes held Rose
transfixed for an instant before she noted the wistful, childish droop
of the mouth. The girl who had posed for the miniature, if she had been
truthfully portrayed, had not had all that she asked from life.

"Look at this," Isabel continued.

She offered Rose a bit of knitting work, from which the dust of years
fell lightly. It had once been white, and the needles were still there,
grey and spotted with rust. Rose guessed that the bit had been intended
for a baby's shoe, but never finished. The little shoe had waited, all
those years, for hands that never came back from the agony in which they
wrung themselves to death in the room beyond.

The infinite pity of it stirred Rose to quick tears, but Isabel was
unmoved. "Here's something else," she said.