“No, I won’t more’n a minute. Jot can’t stand it to see me give way. You go and touch a match to the kitchen fire, so ’t the kettle will be boiling, and I’ll have a minute to myself. I don’t know what the neighbors would think to ketch me crying over my drawing-in frame; but the spell’s over now, or ’bout over, and when I can muster up courage I’ll take the rest of the baby’s cloak and put a border of white everlastings round the outside of the rug. It’ll always mean the baby’s birth and Lovey’s death to me; but the flowers will remind me it’s life everlasting for both of ’em, and so it’s the most comforting end I can think of.” It was indeed a beautiful rug when it was finished and laid in front of the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it. When company was expected, she removed it from its accustomed place, and spread it in a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly tread on it. Unexpected callers were managed by a different method. If they seated themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not “set easy” or “rest comfortable” there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed chair by the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely another sign of Diadema’s “p’ison neatness,” excusable in this case, as there was so much white in the new rug. The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fireplace, Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of somber threads. Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage, motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death, were chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square. Diadema came in behind the little school-teacher one afternoon. “I cal’late,” she said, “that being kep’ in a dark room, and never being tread on, it will last longer ’n I do. If it does, Priscilla, you know that white crape shawl of mine I wear to meetings hot Sundays: that would make a second row of everlastings round the border. You could piece out the linings good and smooth on the under side, draw in the white flowers, and fill ’em round with black to set ’em off. The rug would be han’somer than ever then, and the story—would be finished.” CRESSY’S NEW-YEAR’S RENT By Albert Lee