live with the saints of the earth. Experience has proved that. Put them
into one room, and let them fight it out together."

The motion was passed with something of that awe ever attending a
Napoleonic decree, and passed, too, with the utmost good-breeding; for
nobody mentioned the Kilkenny cats. The matron compressed her lips and
lifted her brows, but said nothing; having exhausted her own resources,
she was the more willing to take the superior attitude of good-natured
scepticism.

The moving was speedily accomplished; and at ten o'clock, one morning,
Mrs. Blair was ushered into the room where her forced colleague sat by
the window, knitting. There the two were left alone. Miss Dyer looked
up, and then heaved a tempestuous sigh over her work, in the manner of
one not entirely surprised by its advent, but willing to suppress it,
if such alleviation might be. She was a thin, colorless woman, and
infinitely passive, save at those times when her nervous system
conflicted with the scheme of the universe. Not so Mrs. Blair. She had
black eyes, "like live coals," said her awed associates; and her skin
was soft and white, albeit wrinkled. One could even believe she had
reigned a beauty, as the tradition of the house declared. This morning,
she held her head higher than ever, and disdained expression except
that of an occasional nasal snort. She regarded the room with the air
of an impartial though exacting critic; two little beds covered with
rising-sun quilts, two little pine bureaus, two washstands. The
sunshine lay upon the floor, and in that radiant pathway Miss Dyer sat.

"If I'd ha' thought I should ha' come to this," began Mrs. Blair, in
the voice of one who speaks perforce after long sufferance, "I'd ha'
died in my tracks afore I'd left my comfortable home down in Tiverton