VOLUME XXVI

NUMBER TWELVE

She was little-a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands; she was gray-a soft, silver gray-too gray for her forty years (and this fragment of my story begins when she was forty); and she was a lady in every beat of her warm heart; in every pressure of her white hand; in voice, speech, in all her thoughts and movements. She lived in the quaintest of old colonial houses erected in 1632 in Newport, R. I., fronted by a brick path bordered with fragrant box, which leads up to an old-fashioned porch, its door brightened by a brass knocker. This, together with the knobs, steps, and slits of windows on each side of the door, was kept scrupulously clean by old Janey, who had lived with her for years.

But it is her personality and not her surroundings that lingers in my memory. No one ever heard anything sweeter than her voice; and nobody ever looked into a lovelier face, even if there were little hollows in the cheeks and shy, fan-like wrinkles lurking about the corners of her lambent brown eyes. Nor did her hair mar her beauty. It was not old, dry and withered a wispy gray. (That is not the way it happened.) It was a new, all-of-a-sudden gray, and in less than a week-so Anna once told me-bleaching its brown gold to silver. But the gloss remained, and so did the richness of the folds, and the wealth and weight of it. Inside the green-painted door, with its white trim and brass knocker and knobs, there was a narrow hall hung with old portraits that opened into a room literally all fireplace. Here there were gouty sofas, and five or six big easy chairs

ranged in a half circle, with arms held out as if begging somebody to sit in them, and here, too, was an embroidered worsted fire screen that slid up and down a standard to shield one's face from the blinding blazing logs; and there were tables and old-gold curtains looped back with brass rosettes-ears really-behind which the tresses of the parted curtains were tucked; and there were more old portraits in dingy frames, and samplers under glass, and a rug which a great grandmother had made with her own hands from odds and ends; and a huge workbasket spilling worsteds, and last, and by no manner of means least, a big chintz-covered rocking chair, the little lady's very own-its thin ankles and splay feet hidden by a modest frill. There were all these things and more, and yet I still maintain that the room was just one big fireplace. Not alone because of the size (and it certainly was big. Many a doubting curly head, losing faith in Santa Claus, has crawled behind the old fire dogs, the child's fingers tight about the little old maid's, and been told to look up into the blue-a lesson never forgotten all their lives) but because of the wonderful and never told forgotten things which constantly took place before its blazing embers. For this fireplace was the lady's altar. Here she dispensed wisdom and cheer and love. Everybody in Newport village at that time had sat in one or the other of the chairs grouped about it and had poured out their hearts to her. All sorts of pourings: love affairs, for instance, that were hopeless until she would take the girl's hand in her own and smooth out the tangle; to say