“All her work,” he said, caressingly; “she did it all herself —­every bit,” and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship.  One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment.  He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him.  Then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said:  “She always does that.  You can’t tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something until you’ve done that—­you can see it yourself after it’s done, but that is all you know; you can’t find out the law of it.  It’s like the finishing pats a mother gives the child’s hair after she’s got it combed and brushed, I reckon.  I’ve seen her fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way, though I don’t know the law of any of them.  But she knows the law.  She knows the why and the how both; but I don’t know the why; I only know the how.”

He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom as I had not seen for years:  white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels—­towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation.  So my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words: 

“All her work; she did it all herself—­every bit.  Nothing here that hasn’t felt the touch of her hand.  Now you would think —­But I mustn’t talk so much.”

By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room’s belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself.  I knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him.  I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight at the thing—­knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him.  He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, and cried out: 

“That’s it!  You’ve found it.  I knew you would.  It’s her picture.”

I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and did find there what I had not yet noticed—­a daguerreotype-case.  It contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen.  The man drank the admiration from my face, and was fully satisfied.