There was a photograph in the packet, as she had thought, and presently she had unwrapped it and had it lying before her. There was no accompanying letter that she could find; but there was nothing in that, as she had had one only yesterday. Taking the picture in her hands, she made a determined effort to fix her attention upon it. After that first glance at it, however, she made as if to throw it down, for the woman in it was not Ellen. This was a middle-aged stranger, with traces of hard work in her face and hands, a little droop to her head and a slight stoop to her shoulders. The lips smiled, it was true, but behind the attempt at gaiety the face was tired. Even the clothes she wore had something a little strange about them to Mattie’s English eyes. Yet for all that it was still Ellen.... Even as she looked she saw the likeness stand out, first, in the curve of the cheek, and then in the curve of the mouth. They were Ellen’s eyes, when she came to study them, though the laughing and dancing in them had sunk deeper. They were Ellen’s hands, too, which, even to this day, had kept their old childish habit of clutching at her gown. Her heart swelled as she looked, both on her own account and on her daughter’s, thinking of the light, laughing thing that had gone out of the cottage, to return to her in this guise. She had known that she would look older, of course, and, as far as she could, had taught herself to expect it. But she could never have believed that the years would make so much difference. She remembered that Ellen was younger than Dolly,--Dolly, with her plump, straight, little figure and cheerful, unlined face,-and felt the tears that were in her heart rise up and fill her throat. A horror of Canada seized her,--horror and fear of the land which had played such havoc with Ellen, and which had taken her away from her in more senses than she knew. For it was neither the added years nor the look of endurance which troubled her, after the first. People grew older in England, as well as anywhere else, and Ellen had never been very strong.... What frightened her was the unmistakable air of another country, turning her daughter into a stranger. She sat for a long time trying to will the young Ellen back into the picture, and saw the youth come into it by degrees as the spring green comes upon the hedgerows. And presently, when she had her again, the longing to see her grew greater than she could bear. Silently and unknown to her, as she stared, the tears ran down her face....