of the New England hills. Miss Latham's gift was quaintly unrelated to
herself. In dress, as in person and manner, she was uncompromisingly
plain and stiff. All the more lavishly, therefore, had it been
devoted to the grace and beauty of her sister's child, who, ever
since she came to find a home in her grandfather's house, had been
more stylishly dressed than any other girl in the village. The summer
boarders, whom the keen eye of Miss Latham studied with unerring sense
of the best new effects in costume, wondered at Lydia's elegance, as
she sat beside her aunt in the family pew, a triumph of that grim
artist's skill. Lydia knew that she was well dressed, but she knew
that after all she was only the expression of her aunt's inspirations.
Her own gift was of another sort. Her father was a music-teacher,
whose failing health had obliged him to give up his profession, and
who had taken the traveling agency of a parlor organ manufactory for
the sake of the out-door life. His business had brought him to South
Bradfield, where he sold an organ to Deacon Latham's church, and fell
in love with his younger daughter. He died a few years after his
marriage, of an ancestral consumption, his sole heritage from the good
New England stock of which he came. His skill as a pianist, which was
considerable, had not descended to his daughter, but her mother had
bequeathed her a peculiarly rich and flexible voice, with a joy in
singing which was as yet a passion little affected by culture. It was
this voice which, when Lydia rose to join in the terrible hymning of
the congregation at South Bradfield, took the thoughts of people off
her style and beauty; and it was this which enchanted her father's
sister when, the summer before the date of which we write, that lady
had come to America on a brief visit, and heard Lydia sing at her
parlor organ in the old homestead.

Mrs. Erwin had lived many years abroad, chiefly in Italy, for the