elderly lady bursting noisily into the room,--elderly, yet with a
youthful expression of face, owing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious
black eyes. She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fashion, in a
wrapper of crimson merino much the worse for wear, a blue handkerchief
twisted turban-like round her head, and her feet encased in list
slippers. The person to whom she addressed herself was a young lady with
dark hair, which, despite its evident repugnance, was restrained into
smooth glossy braids over the forehead, and at the crown of the small
graceful head into the simple knot which Horace has described as
"Spartan." Her dress contrasted the speaker's by an exquisite neatness.

We have seen her before as the lady in the pearl-coloured robe; but seen
now at home she looks much younger. She was one of those whom,
encountered in the streets or in society, one might guess to be married,
--probably a young bride; for thus seen there was about her an air of
dignity and of self-possession which suits well with the ideal of chaste
youthful matronage; and in the expression of the face there was a pensive
thoughtfulness beyond her years. But as she now sat by the open window
arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open on her lap, you
would never have said, "What a handsome woman!" you would have said,
"What a charming girl!" All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh.
The dignity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness of
her expression in an untroubled serene sweetness.

Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends engaged in some
absorbing cause of thought, and who are in the habit when they go out,
especially if on solitary walks, to take that cause of thought with them.
The friend may be an orator meditating his speech, a poet his verses, a
lawyer a difficult case, a physician an intricate malady. If you have
such a friend, and you observe him thus away from his home, his face will