"Yes, but to be unable to yield when you know you should--that's awful."

"Is it?" inquired Miss Ainslie, with quiet amusement.

"Ask Aunt Jane," returned Ruth, laughing. "I begin to perceive our

definite relationship."

Miss Ainslie leaned forward to put another maple log on the fire. "Tell

me more about Aunt Jane," Ruth suggested. "I'm getting to be somebody's

relative, instead of an orphan, stranded on the shore of the world."

"She's hard to analyse," began the older woman. "I have never been

able to reconcile her firmness with her softness. She's as hard as New

England granite, but I think she wears it like a mask. Sometimes, one

sees through. She scolds me very often, about anything that occurs to

her, but I never pay any attention to it. She says I shouldn't live here

all alone, and that I deserve to have something dreadful happen to me,

but she had all the trees cut down that stood on the hill between

her window and mine, and had a key made to my lower door, and made

me promise that if I was ill at any time, I would put a signal in my

window--a red shawl in the daytime and a light at night. I hadn't any

red shawl and she gave me hers.

"One night--I shall never forget it--I had a terrible attack of

neuralgia, during the worst storm I have ever known. I didn't even

know that I put the light in the window--I was so beside myself with

pain--but she came, at two o'clock in the morning, and stayed with me

until I was all right again. She was so gentle and so tender--I shall

always love her for that."

The sweet voice vibrated with feeling, and Ruth's thoughts flew to

the light in the attic window, but, no--it could not be seen from Miss

Ainslie's. "What does Aunt Jane look like?" she asked, after a pause.

"I haven't a picture, except one that was taken a long time ago, but

I'll get that." She went upstairs and returned, presently, putting an

old-fashioned ambrotype into Ruth's hand.

The velvet-lined case enshrined Aunt Jane in the bloom of her youth. It

was a young woman of twenty or twenty-five, seated in a straight-backed

chair, with her hands encased in black lace mitts and folded in the lap

of her striped silk gown. The forehead was high, protruding slightly,

the eyes rather small, and very dark, the nose straight, and the

little chin exceedingly firm and determined. There was an expression of

maidenly wistfulness somewhere, which Ruth could not definitely locate,

but there was no hint of it in the chin.

"Poor little Aunt Jane," said Ruth. "Life never would be easy for her."

"No," returned Miss Ainslie, "but she would not let anyone know."




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