Reynolds, Miss Elvira Reynolds,
George, Susy, Anna, John, Hazel, Ella, and Rufus Reynolds, her former
charges. When all this was done, she lighted a little blaze on the
hearth, took the red curtains from their bands, let them fall
gracefully to the floor, and sat down in her rocking-chair,
reconciled to her existence for absolutely the first time in her
forty years.
I hope Mrs. Butterfield was happy enough in Paradise to appreciate
and feel Lyddy's joy. I can even believe she was glad to have died,
since her dying could bring such content to any wretched living human
soul. As Lydia sat in the firelight, the left side of her poor face
in shadow, you saw that she was distinctly harmonious. Her figure,
clad in a plain black-and-white print dress, was a graceful, womanly
one. She had beautifully sloping shoulders and a sweet waist.
Her hair was soft and plentiful, and her hands were fine, strong, and
sensitive. This possibility of rare beauty made her scars and burns
more pitiful, for if a cheap chromo has a smirch across its face, we
think it a matter of no moment, but we deplore the smallest scratch
or blur on any work of real art.
Lydia felt a little less bitter and hopeless about life when she sat
in front of her own open fire, after her usual twilight walk. It was
her habit to wander down the wooded road after her simple five-
o'clock supper, gathering ferns or goldenrod or frost flowers for her
vases; and one night she heard, above the rippling of the river, the
strange, sweet, piercing sound of Anthony Croft's violin.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47