The house cedars showed over the brown hills. "Dr. Bude wanted Old Miss to get a trained nurse because somebody's got more or less to watch at night. But Old Miss wouldn't hear to it. She don't approve of women training for nurses, so she's got young Phoebe and Isham's second wife--and I think myself," said Captain Bob, "that I wouldn't want a young white woman that I couldn't order round." Red brick and brown fields and the black-green of many cedars--here was Gilead Balm, looking just as it used to look of a February. The air was cold and still, the day a grey one, the smoke from the chimneys moving upward sluggishly. Miss Serena came down the porch steps and greeted Hagar as she stepped from the carriage. "Yes, your old room. Did you have a tiresome journey?--Is your trunk coming? Then I'll send it up as soon as they bring it. Young Phoebe, you take Miss Hagar's bag up to her room. The fire's lighted, Hagar, and Mimy shall make you a cup of coffee. We're glad to see you." The old room, her mother's and her own! Hagar had not been in it in winter-time for a long while. When Phoebe was gone, she sat in the winged chair by the fire and regarded the familiar wall-paper and the old, carved wardrobe and the four-poster bed and the sofa where Maria had lain, and, between the dimity curtains at the windows, the winter landscape. The fire was bright and danced in the old mahogany; the old chintz covers were upon the chair and sofa--the old pattern, only the hues faded. Hagar rose, took off her travelling dress, bathed and put on a dark, silken dressing-gown. She took the pins from her hair and let it stream; it was like Maria's. She stood for a moment, her eyes upon the pallid day, the rusty cedars without the window, then she went to the chintz sofa and lay down in the firelight, piling the pillows behind her head, taking, half-consciously, the posture that oftenest in her memory she saw Maria take. Her mother was present with her; there came an expression into her face that was her mother's. Old Miss knocked at the door, and entered without waiting for the "Come in!" Hagar rose and embraced her grandmother; then Old Miss sat down in the winged chair and her granddaughter went back to the sofa. The two gazed at each other. Hagar did not know that she looked to-day like Maria, and Old Miss did not examine the springs and sources of a mounting anger and sense of injury. She sat very straight, with her knitting in her hand, wearing a cap upon her smoothly parted hair, in which there were yet strands of brown, wearing a black stuff skirt and low-heeled shoes over white stockings; comely yet, and as ever, authoritative. "I am so very sorry about grandfather," said Hagar. "Uncle Bob thinks he is better--" "Yes, he is better. He will be well presently. I should not," said Old Miss coldly, "have written asking you to come but that Dr. Bude advised it." "I was very glad to come."