backs, or sitting on their mammas' knees; babies crowing or crying. No one who has a baby ever fails to send this maiden lady a photograph of it. 

 Miss Lydia settled me with some cushions in my chair, and shut the doorway leading to her bedroom beyond, where I caught sight of a painted iron bedstead, and a small indiarubber hot-water bottle hanging from one of its knobs. It is Miss Lydia's most cherished possession, and she generally speaks of it reverently as "the comfort of my life." 

 Poor Miss Lydia! Hers must be, I think, a lonely life, sacrificed patiently to an invalid and almost inarticulate sister, and yet it is the very solitude of this little chamber which is one of the few privileges to which she lays claim. It is to this little room, with its humble furnishings, that all her troubles are taken, and it is here by the window that she can sit with folded hands and think perhaps of something in life which surely poor Lydia has missed. It is here she prays for those whose sins weigh far more heavily upon her than they do upon themselves, and it is here that she can pause and question with gentle faith the perplexities of life. 

 Miss Lydia tells my sister that she makes a thorough examination of her room every night before she goes to bed, to see if there is a burglar concealed anywhere. The movable property in the tiny house is probably not worth many pounds, as a pawnbroker appraises things, and it would be a hardened thief that could deprive the sisters of their small possessions; but the dread remains—the dread of burglars and the dread of mice. Were it not for the look of the thing, she would almost rather discover a burglar than a mouse—"for at least burglars are human," she explains, "and one might be able to reason with them or pray for them, but who shall control the goings of a mouse?" 

 Sometimes these fears become quite a terror to Lydia Blind, and she once said that she felt so defenceless that she thought it would be a great comfort to have a male defender to protect her. 

 It is the only unmaidenly remark she ever made, and it makes her blush in the dark when she thinks of it. She believes every one remembers it with as vivid a distinctness as she does, and she trembles to think what sort of construction may have been put upon her words by ill-natured or thoughtless persons. It is a real trouble to her; but then all her troubles are real, and so are her bitter repentances over perfectly imaginary sins. But she has her little room and her faded photographs—life has its 

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