“Your eyes—your mouth.”

“What about ’em?” 48

48

“I—I—don’t believe I could explain it,” responded Lucy slowly.

“Mebbe you’d have liked me better as a little girl,” grinned her aunt whimsically.

“I—yes. I’m sure I should have liked you as a little girl.”

The reply piqued Ellen. She bent forward and scrutinized the likeness more critically. The picture was of a child in a low-cut print dress and pantalettes,—a resolute figure, all self-assurance and self-will.

It was easy to trace in the face the features of the woman who confronted it: the brows of each were high, broad, and still bordered by smoothly parted hair; the well-formed noses, too, were identical; but the eyes of the little maiden in the old-fashioned gown sparkled with an unmalicious merriment and frankness the woman’s had lost, and the curving mouth of the child was unmarred by bitter lines. Ellen stirred uncomfortably.

As she looked she suddenly became conscious of a desire to turn her glance away from the calm gaze of her youthful self. Yes, the years had indeed left their mark upon her, she inwardly confessed. She did not look like that 49 now. Lucy was right. Her eyes had changed, and her mouth, too.

49

“Folks grow old,” she murmured peevishly. “Nobody can expect to keep on looking as they did when they were ten years old.”

Abruptly she moved toward the door.

“There’s water in the pitcher, an’ there’s soap and towels here, I guess,” she remarked. “When you get fixed up, come downstairs; supper’ll be on the table.”

The door banged and she was gone. But as she moved alone about the kitchen she was still haunted by the clear, questioning eyes of the child in the photograph upstairs. They seemed to follow her accusingly, reproachfully.

“Drat old pictures!” she at last burst out angrily. “They’d ought to be burnt up—the whole lot of them! They always set you thinkin’.”

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