She swept open the feathers.
They were white and wonderful.
"It was never used except by one very beautiful woman," said the
schoolmaster, without looking at her. "She was a good deal older than
I; but somehow she seemed to belong to me. She died, and I thought I
should like to have you keep this."
Susan was waving it back and forth before her face, stirring the air to
fragrance. Her eyes were full of dreams. "My! ain't it rich!" she
murmured. "The Queen o' Sheba never had no better. An' Solon's comin'
over to breakfast."
A SECOND MARRIAGE
Amelia Porter sat by her great open fireplace, where the round,
consequential black kettle hung from the crane, and breathed out a
steamy cloud to be at once licked up and absorbed by the heat from a
snatching flame below. It was exactly a year and a day since her
husband's death, and she had packed herself away in his own corner of
the settle, her hands clasped across her knees, and her red-brown eyes
brooding on the nearer embers. She was not definitely speculating on
her future, nor had she any heart for retracing the dull and gentle
past. She had simply relaxed hold on her mind; and so, escaping her, it
had gone wandering off into shadowy prophecies of the immediate years.
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