She loved Miss Webster, and she had gladly responded to her invitation to leave the New England village, where she was dependent on the charity of relatives, and make her home in the new country.  Miss Webster needed a companion and housekeeper; there would be no salary, but a comfortable home and clothes that she could feel she had earned.  She had come full of youth and spirit and hope.  Youth and hope and spirit had dribbled away, but she had stayed, and stayed.  To-day she wished she had married any clod in her native village that had been good enough to address her.  Never for one moment had she known the joys of freedom, of love, of individuality.

Miss Webster entered abruptly.

“Abby,” she exclaimed, “Hiram is ill.”  And she related the tale of his unbending.

Miss Williams listened indifferently.  She was very tired of Hiram.  She accepted with a perfunctory expression of gratitude the gold piece allotted to her.  “You are forty-two, you are old, you are nobody,” was knelling through her brain.

“What is the matter?” asked Miss Webster, sympathetically; “have you been crying?  Don’t you feel well?  You’d better dress, dear; they’ll be here soon.”

She sat down suddenly on the bed and flung her arms about her companion, the tears starting to her kindly eyes.

“We are old women,” she said.  “Life has not meant much to us.  You are younger in years, but you have lived in this dismal old house so long that you have given it and us your youth.  You have hardly as much of it now as we have.  Poor girl!”

The two women fondled each other, Abby appreciating that, although Miss Webster might not be a woman of depths, she too had her regrets, her yearnings for what had never been.

“What a strange order of things it is,” continued the older woman, “that we should have only one chance for youth in this life!  It comes to so many of us when circumstances will not permit us to enjoy it.  I drudged—­drudged—­drudged, when I was young.  Now that I have leisure and—­and opportunity to meet people, at least, every chance of happiness has gone from me.  But you are comparatively young yet, really; hope on.  The grave will have me in a few years, but you can live and be well for thirty yet.  Ah! if I had those thirty years!”

“I would give them to you gladly for one year of happiness—­of youth.”

Miss Webster rose and dried her eyes.  “Well,” she said, philosophically, “regrets won’t bring things.  We’ve people to entertain to-day, so we must get out of the dumps.  Put on your best frock, like a good child, and come down.”

She left the room.  Miss Williams rose hurriedly, unhooked a brown silk frock from the cupboard, and put it on.  Her hair was always smooth; the white line of disunion curved from brow to the braids pinned primly above the nape of the neck.  As she looked into the glass to-day she experienced a sudden desire to fringe her hair, to put red on her cheeks; longing to see if any semblance of her youthful prettiness could be coaxed back.  She lifted a pair of scissors, but threw them hastily down.  She had not the courage to face the smiles and questions that would greet the daring innovation, the scathing ridicule of old man Webster.