is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the
true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of
thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which
can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits if it
stands in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten
in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle
matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking
this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips
upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength."_
--RUSKIN.




IDEALA




CHAPTER I.

She came among us without flourish of trumpets. She just slipped into
her place, almost unnoticed, but once she was settled there it seemed
as if we had got something we had wanted all our lives, and we should
have missed her as you would miss the thrushes in the spring, or any
other sweet familiar thing. But what the secret of her charm was I
cannot say. She was full of inconsistencies. She disliked ostentation,
and never wore those ornamental fidgets ladies delight in, but she
would take a piece of priceless lace to cover her head when she went
to water her flowers. And she said rings were a mistake; if your hands