The room Mrs. Lyman shortly found herself in was a strong contrast to the one her daughter had carefully fitted up for her. It was spotlessly clean and trim; the walls were high and white, the furniture of the plainest, the floors bare except for the strip of carpet by the bed and one by the window, where the occupant would be supposed to sit in the cane-seat rocker. It depended entirely on one's previous surroundings what her first impressions of life in this place would be. Old Mrs. Carter, who had lived at sixes and sevens all her life, with scarcely a corner that she could call her own, thought her room was next to Heaven itself. To Mrs. Lyman it simply looked bare and dreary. The buzz in the long dining room, mingling with the clatter of cups and spoons, was cheerfulness itself to Mrs. Carter, while to Mrs. Lyman's refilled ears and sensitive nerves it was positively distressing. It was trying to her, too, to mingle with all sorts of natures, to listen to garrulous complaints and garrulous stories from gossipy old women. She would much have preferred to shut herself in with her books and her own thoughts, but she did not. Her Master was always kind and helpful to the most uncongenial people; so would she be, for his sake. Necessarily, though, it was a lonely, monotonous life for her. Old friends were too remote and too busy to remember her often. One afternoon she sat at her window looking down into the street, when a carriage drew up, and a young lady stepped lightly out. The coachman handed her a basket of flowers, and she almost ran up the broad stone steps, with that childlike eagerness of manner which is in refreshing contrast to the languid air of many of her class. Mrs. Lyman listened eagerly as her fresh young voice was heard in the hall. The golden hair, and eyes as blue as the hyacinths she carried, brought to her visions of another girl as bright and graceful. Just so she looked, years ago, her dear lost Margaret. Then the mother's heart went back over the girlhood and womanhood of her darling, and just as she was wondering how it was possible for Robert Agnew ever to have fancied he loved that other woman, when his life had been so blessed with Margaret, there came a knock at the door, and the matron brought in the bright-haired girl with her flowers, saying:— "Mrs. Lyman, I have brought Miss Harlowe in to see you. She's come on ahead to tell you that spring is coming some day." She looked sweet and fair enough to be spring's herald in very truth, coming in, as she did, out of the snow and sleet of the winter day, roses in her hands and roses on her cheeks, looking up almost shyly into the face of the stately old lady. Each regarded the other for a moment with surprise and admiration, and Esther Harlowe, yielding to a sudden impulse, reached up and left a kiss soft as a rose leaf on the faded old cheek; then selecting the choicest of the roses, begged her to accept them.