with pleased anticipation the sick woman was comfortably up in the bedroom in all his life the son had never felt so drawn to his mother there was a new look in her eyes as law lane he went toward her she had lost her high color and looked at him as she never had done before come close here said i believe i m goin to about ag in after all mis powder says i be but them s i had down the yesterday was twice as bad as the i struck with i may never be the same to work but i ain t goin to fight with folks no more the lord let me live a spell longer i ain t a goin to fight with nobody no matter how bad i want to now you go an you a good breakfast i ain t eat a since breakfast yesterday and you can bring me a help o anything sister powder my i hope last muttered sister powder to herself as she heaped the blue plate wish you all a merry christmas i she said i like to forgot my manners it was christmas day whether anybody in law lane remembered it or not the sun shone bright on the sparkling snow the were dropping and the snow birds and blue came about the door the wars of law lane were ended a lost a great many years it had been understood in that miss once had a lover and that he been lost at sea by little and little in one way and another her acquaintances found out or made up the whole story and miss stood in the position not of an unmarried woman exactly but rather of having spent most of her life in a long and lonely she looked like a person with a history strangers often said as if we each did not have a history and her own unbroken reserve about this romance of hers gave everybody the more respect for it the people paid willing deference to miss her family had always been one that could be liked and respected and she was the last that was left in the old home of which she was so fond this was a high square house with a row of pointed windows in its roof a porch in front a lost lover with some bushes near it and down by the road was a long orderly procession of like a row of standing guard she had lived here alone since her father s death twenty years before she was a kind just woman whose pleasures were of a stately and sober sort and she seemed not unhappy in her loneliness though she sometimes said gravely that she was the last of her family as if the fact had a great sadness for her she had some middle aged and elderly cousins who lived at a distance and they came occasionally to see her but there had been no young people staying in her house for many years until this summer when the daughter of her youngest cousin had written to ask if she might come to make a visit she was a girl of twenty both older and younger than her years her father and who were civil had taken some work upon the line of a railway in the far western country had made many long journeys with them before and since she had left school and she had meant to follow them now after spending a fortnight with the old cousin whom she had not seen since her childhood a l t lover her father ha laughed at this visit as a and warned her of the and of but the result was that the girl found herself very happy in the comfortable home she was still her own free lucky and self and the old house was so much pleasanter for the girlish face and life that miss had at first timidly and then most heartily begged her to stay for the whole summer or even the autumn until her father was ready to come east the name of was very dear to miss and she grew of her guest when the village people saw her glance at the girl affectionately as they sat together in the family of a sunday or saw them walking together after tea they said it was a good thing for miss how bright she looked and no doubt she would leave all her money to if she played her cards well but we will do justice and say that she was not she would have scorned such a thought she had grown to have a great love for her cousin and really liked to please her she her i have no doubt and her repress a lost lover sion her sa rare words of approval had a great fascination for a girl who had just been used to people who and were upon most intimate terms with directly and could forget jou with equal ease and liked having so admiring and easily pleased an audience as miss and her old servant she liked to be queen of her company she had so many gay bright stories of what had happened to herself and her friends beside she was clever with her needle and had all those practical gifts which elderly women approve so heartily in girls they liked her pretty clothes she was sensible and economical and busy they praised her to each other and to the world and even stubborn old the man servant to whom miss herself spoke with deference would do anything she asked would by no means choose so dull a life as this for the rest of her days but she enjoyed it immensely for the time being she instinctively avoided all that would shock the grave dignity and old school ideas of miss and somehow she never 