When spring came again, and Decoration Day arrived, Mrs. Wallace felt that Mrs. Swift, for the first time, showed a lack of tact--of proper feeling--in insisting upon having her accompany her to the cemetery that day. It would be very painful to see the graves, all flower-covered, and to think of her own dear, unhonored dead, lying so far away. This insistence was so unlike Mrs. Swift’s usual manner, too! Well, she must bear it! and so she entered the carriage, with a heavy heart, to drive to the cemetery, and wondered a little why Mrs. Swift had two great wreaths, instead of one, to lay upon the grave. When they arrived, she wished to remain in the carriage, but again Mrs. Swift insisted upon having her company, and together they made their way to the family plot, and there stood the explanation of Mrs. Swift’s strange conduct--a fair, white stone, bearing the name of Wallace instead of Swift. And Mrs. Wallace knelt humbly down to read that this monument was in memory of the young captain, Marion Wallace, whose body lay in the distant State where he had fallen fighting for the “cause” he loved! As she pressed her lips upon the name on the stone, she solemnly vowed that the welfare of the woman who had done this thing should be the one object of her life hereafter. And so they faced the world together. A gentle pair, helping the poor or the troubled; trusting and admiring each other; Mrs. Swift honestly believing Mrs. Wallace was the greatest pianist in the city, and that her feeble little sketches were remarkable works of art, while Mrs. Wallace stood in speechless wonder at Mrs. Swift’s ability, with only the help of an inch or two of stubby pencil and a morsel of paper, to bring perfect order out of the chaos of her accounts. And though she had something less than three hundred a year, it was really astonishing the muddle she could get her affairs into! So it’s no wonder that she respected Mrs. Swift as an mathematician of parts. The shawl was worn by one as often as the other, though it was acknowledged to be Mrs. Wallace’s property, since she owned it for years before that day when young Lieutenant Swift had purchased it from a soldier who declared he had bought it for a few dollars from an old contraband camp-follower. And as they shared the shawl, so they shared everything--duties, pleasures, or personal belongings. Each acted as housekeeper, month about. If one was daintier, the other had more executive ability. They came to understand each other so perfectly that when Mrs. Wallace sometimes sat completely lost in thought, Mrs. Swift could tell, from the expression of her face, whether she was thinking of her son’s young manhood and soldierly death or of his baby days when within the tender circle of her arms he found a very tower of defence against the world.