The visitor gone, Miss Wax heaved a sigh of relief, and tried to settle to her work again; but it would not do. Her mind had been disturbed, and, as she often said, her profession required calm. The hand must be steady, the nerves tranquil, or the delicate strands would twist and knot; and now her long, slim fingers were trembling, and the silken threads danced before her eyes. "I must give it up for to-day," said Miss Bethia, sadly; and she put away the little table, and took out a clean silk duster. A parlor must be dusted twice in the day, according to Miss Wax's theory: once in the morning, to remove the night's accumulation of dust, and again toward evening, to take up such particles of the evil thing as had settled during the day on chair or table, book or ornament. The morning task was an anxious one, and apt to be complicated by fears of the coffee's boiling over; but the afternoon dusting was one of the good lady's pleasures, and she took her time over it. She loved to linger over the glass cases, polishing them, admiring the treasures they protected, and recalling the circumstances of their making. It was pleasant to accompany her, as one was sometimes permitted to do, on one of these friendly rounds. "These pond-lilies," she would say, "were a wedding present to my cousin Cilissa Vinton, deceased. They were admired by some; Cilissa thought they were real, and wished to wear them in her hair. After her lamented death (of spasms), the family returned them to me as a memento. That spray of roses is made of feathers, the breast-feathers of the domestic goose. I never allowed them to be plucked from the living bird, my dear! I used to wear them in my hair; some thought the contrast pretty." And Miss Bethia would sigh gently, and glance at the long mirror, which reflected her tall and angular gentility. But this afternoon the good lady's thoughts were not reminiscent. As she stood before the rosewood "what-not," lifting each article, wiping it, and replacing it with delicate nicety (I can see them all: the two mandarins, the china baby in the bath-tub,--you could take him out! the whole thing would go into a walnut-shell,--the pink-and-gold Dresden shepherd and shepherdess, the Chinese puzzles, and all the other quaint pleasantnesses), it was of to-day rather than yesterday that Miss Bethia was thinking. Should she--_could_ she--walk in a public procession attired as Minerva? She put aside with an inward shudder Mrs. Weight's characterization of the possible performance. She, Bethia Wax, could not "strut and stomp" if she tried. Her walk was graceful, as she was well aware; in her youth she had been said to glide. "As a swan o'er the water, Quahaug's fairy daughter In majesty maiden doth glide; May the day Wax and wane When the sighs of her swain May waft her to bliss as a bride!"