Los Angeles herald., 1905-04-23
TEE WEf5oDyT tH0RCH. SOUTH pi1ER M


pudgy hands, Mrs. Cordova's are so
thin and worn that were it not for the
safeguard of her sprained knuckles
swollen inordinately large, the we'd
ding ring would slip from her finger.
Julia Browne was obviously and vui-
carly pretty, with that quality of pret-
tiness which vanity allied with good
digestion invariably lends to village
girls on the charmed side of twenty
five, and Julia Browne Is almost that,
as against Mrs. Cordovas nearly thir-
ty-two years. Mrs. Cordova is not OBJ
viously and vulgarly pretty, she is
hardly pretty at all, il measured by
South River standards She is much
more than pretty, she is strangely, elus-
lively beautiful Two or three claptrap
terms will serve to sum up all the at
fractions of Julia Browne, and those
terms are brown eyes, red lips, dark
curling hair.
AS to the wife in the case, her at
fractions are not to be expressed in
any terms found in dictionaries. Their
expression is the business and would be
the joy of the skillful portrait painter,
for the beauty that is an inevitable
indeed an inalienable, part of irregular
features, of sallow skin, of hollow
eyes, of hair that has long lost its
luster-such is the very acme of fem
inine beauty. And that is the quality
of Mrs. Cordova's beauty, quality
which was in nowise impaired, but
rather, if anything, enhanced by the
nondescript ugliness of the calico
wrapper which she wore on the occa-
sion of receiving the visitor whose OBJ
servations have been set forth in the
foregoing.
1t was in her brother-in-laws house,
in the dull little village of Shrewsbury,
where she had found an asylum for
herself and the three children who are
worse than fatherless. The youngest
of these, d fat, lusty baby of eighteen
she opened the front door, and as she
bore him across the little hall and into |
the sitting room, her fragile figure bent
under the growing laughing load. She |
is, indeed, little woman. She weighs |
ninety-four pounds. The baby weighs |
twenty-five. 1t is the third baby she |
has borne; it is the third big, lusty |
child that she has carried in her arms |
and rocked to sleep, that she has
laughed over when she was we'll and |
wept over when he was sick unto |
death. All the while doing her own |
all the while washing and |
brewing and baking and sewing and |
Methodist minister knows how. and all
the while being the lady of the parson-
age, too, as every wife of a Methodist
minister is expected to be.
She apoliglzed for the nondescript,
ugly wrapper. Poor little woman. She
Is used to the attitude of apology. Her
trunks were still over in South River,
along with the rest of the dear lares
and penates which she has saved, or
may be able to save, from the wreck
'I am selling everything / can
everything that will bring in the
she said timidly. and with a
,ertain deferential hesitancy, as though
she half expected some unseen pres.
ence to materialize for the express pur-
pose of correcting, modifying her state
nent. She talks like one who had be-
,ome Injured to the humiliation of hav-
ng her speech, be 1t never so correct,
criticised before company. and even
low that she is free from all such
,onjugal membership the habit of defer
initial hesltancy still remains with her.
1--WE sold most everything now that
S salable," she went on, pretty nearly
'verything-except-except his bicycle