“Well,” he answered, with a laugh, “she sort o' got what she was wantin'. More'n she was lookin' for, I 'low. Seven o' them. An' all straight an' hearty. Ecod! sir, you never _seed_ such a likely litter o' young uns. Spick an' span, ecod! from stem t' stern. Smellin' clean an' sweet; decks as white as snow; an' every nail an' knob polished 'til it made you blink t' see it. An' when I was down Thunder Arm way, last season, they was some talk _o' one o' them bein' raised for a parson!_” I went on deck. The night was still black; but beyond--high over the open sea, hung in the depths of the mystery of night and space--there was a star. HYACINTHUS BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN The group was seated on the flat door-stone and the gravel walk in front of it, which crossed the green square of the Lynn front yard. On the wide flat stone, in two chairs, sat Mrs. Rufus Lynn and her opposite neighbor, Mrs. Wilford Biggs. On a chair on the gravel walk sat Mr. John Mangam, Mrs. Biggs's brother--an elderly unmarried man who lived in the village. On the step itself sat Mrs. Samson, an old lady of eighty-five, as straight as if she were sixteen, and by her side, her long body bent gracefully, her elbows resting on her knees, her chin resting in the cup of her two hands, Sarah Lynn, her great-granddaughter. Sarah Lynn was often spoken of as “pretty if she wasn't so slouchy,” in Adams, the village in which she had been born and bred. Adams people were not, generally speaking, of the kind who understand the grace which may exist in utter freedom of attitude and motion. It was a very hot evening of one of the hottest days of July, and Mrs. Rufus Lynn wore in deference to the climate a gown of white cambric with a little black sprig thereon, but nothing could excel the smoothly boned fit of it. And she did not lean back in her chair, but was as erect as the very old lady on the door-step, who was her grandmother, and who was also stiffly gowned, in a black cashmere as straightly made as if it had been armor. The influence of heredity showed strongly in the two, but in Sarah showed the intervening generation. Sarah was a great beauty with no honor in her own country. Her long softly curved figure was surmounted by a head wound with braids of the purest flax color, and a face like a cameo. She was very fair, with the fairness of alabaster. Her mother's face had a hard blondness, pink and white, but fixed, and her great-grandmother had the same. Mrs. Samson often glanced disapprovingly at her great-granddaughter, seated by her side in her utterly lax attitude. “Don't set so hunched up,” she whispered to her in a sharp hiss. She did not want Mr. John Mangam, whom she regarded as a suitor of Sarah's, to have his attention called to the girl's defects. But Sarah had laughed softly, and replied, quite aloud, in a languid, sweet voice, “Oh, it is so hot, grandma!”