had died when[31] his daughter was a little child. When Glen Darrow was old enough to weigh and balance and catch shadings of feeling she realized that Miss Ada was entirely resigned to her mother’s early demise; it was, she clearly considered, the act of a wise Providence ... the best possible thing for an impossible connection to do was to quietly slip away.... It was interesting to see how wholly Tenafee, how not at all Simpson, Miss Ada considered herself. She said, “My father,” or “my own dear father,” if other sires or personages were under discussion, with a lifted chin, an intake of breath, a gleam in her pale eye, but she said, when absolutely necessary, “My little mother,” or “My poor little mother who left me when I was a tiny child.” Once she described her—“My little mother, who was a sweetly pretty young creature, innately refined.” Pride of blood burned brightly in the faded spinster; she was the flower of chivalry, withered and pale, a flower pressed carefully in a precious old book. It was a great pity that she was obliged to teach in the public schools at forty-four, after her father’s death which came as a climax to a lingering, querulous illness, but Miss Josephine’s select school was full and running over with high-born and reduced maiden ladies whose fathers had not married beneath them, so she became “Miz-zada” to the proletariat, living[32] in a small housekeeping room which was situated as far as possible from the stable now conducted by her Simpson uncles. [31] [32] On holidays, New Year’s Day in particular, Miss Ada put on her gray silk and the jet jewelry and the lace which had been her father’s mother’s, and drove in a hired hack (not a Simpson vehicle, however) in the earlier days and presently in an infirm motor car, to the house of her second cousin, Mr. Amos Tenafee, there for a period of not less than two hours or more than three to disport herself among her kinfolk. She was warmly and affectionately received by her Cousin Amos and his wife (dear Cousin Minnie, who had been one of the Charleston Harringtons) and the rest of the family connection, and presented to strangers with a great deal of impressiveness. “You know our cousin, I think?” the tribal head would say, a courtly hand at the back of her waist, bringing her gently forward. “Our Cousin Ada?—Hector’s girl? Is it possible? I am amazed, sir! Ada, my dear, may I present Mr. LeRoy Harrison from Atlanta? His queenly mother, you will recall, did us the honor to receive with us two years ago to-day. A great loss, sir, a great loss ... one which we shared with you, my dear
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