BANKRUPT


Miss Dorcas True stood in her square front entry, saying good-by to
Phoebe Marsh. The entry would have been quite dark from its
time-stained woodwork and green paper, except for the twilight glimmer
swaying and creeping through the door leading into the garden. Out
there were the yellow of coreopsis, and the blue of larkspur, melted
into a dim magnificence of color, suffusing all the air; to one who
knew what common glory was a-blowing and a-growing there without, the
bare seclusion of the house might well seem invaded by it, like a
heavenly flood. Phoebe, too, in her pink calico, appeared to spread
abroad the richness of her youth and bloom, and radiate a certain light
about her where she stood. She was tall, her proportions were ample,
and her waist very trim. She had the shoulders and arms of the women of
an elder time, whom we classify vaguely now as goddesses. The Tiverton
voices argued that she would have been "real handsome if she'd had any
sense about doin' her hair;" which was brought down loosely over her
ears, in the fashion of her Aunt Phoebe's miniature. Miss Dorcas beside
her looked like one of autumn's brown, quiescent stems left standing by
the way. She was firmly built, yet all her lines subdued themselves to
that meagreness which ever dwells afar from beauty. The deep marks of
hard experience had been graven on her forehead, and her dark eyes
burned inwardly; the tense, concentrated spark of pain and the glowing
of happy fervor seemed as foreign to them as she herself to all the
lighter joys and hopes. Her only possibility of beauty lay in an
abundance of soft dark hair; but even that had been restricted and
coiled into a compact, utilitarian compass. She had laid one nervous
hand on Phoebe's arm, and she grasped the arm absently, from time to
time, in talking, with unconscious joy in its rounded warmth. She spoke