Mrs. Zelotes Brewster was crossing her yard to her son’s house when she saw Ellen passing, and paused to gaze at her with that superb pride which pertains to self and is yet superior to it.  It was the idealized pride of her own youth.  When she proceeded again against the February gusts, it was with an unconscious aping of her granddaughter’s freedom of gait.  Mrs. Zelotes wore an old red cashmere scarf crossed over her bosom; she held up her black skirts in front, and they trailed pointedly in the rear; she also stood well back on her heels, and when she paused in the wind-swept yard presented a curious likeness to an old robin pausing for reconnoitre.  Fanny and Eva Tenny in the next house saw her coming.

“Look at her holding up her dress in front and letting it drag in the back,” said Eva.  “It always seemed to me there was somethin’ wrong about any woman that held up her dress in front and let it drag behind.”

Eva retained all the coarse beauty of her youth, but lines of unalterable hardness were fixed on her forehead and at her mouth corners, and the fierce flush in her cheeks was as set as paint.  Her beauty had endured the siege; no guns of mishaps could affect it, but that charm of evanescence which awakens tenderness was gone.  Jim Tenny’s affection seemed to be waning, and Eva looked at herself in the glass even when bedecked with tawdry finery, and owned that she did not wonder.  She strained up her hair into the latest perkiness of twist, and crimped it, and curled her feathers, and tied her ribbons not as much in hope as in a stern determination to do her part towards the furbishing of her faded star of attraction.  “Jim don’t act as if he thought so much of me, an’ I dun’no’ as I wonder,” she told her sister.

Fanny looked at her critically.  “You mean you ain’t so good-lookin’ as you used to be?” said she.

Eva nodded.

“Well, if that is all men care for us,” said Fanny.

“It ain’t,” said Eva, “only it’s the key to it.  It’s like losin’ the key and not bein’ able to get in the door in consequence.”

“It wa’n’t my husband’s key,” said Fanny, with a glance at her own face, faded as to feature and bloom, but intensified as to love and daily duty, like that of a dog sharpened to one faithfulness of existence.

“Andrew ain’t Jim,” said Eva, shortly.

“I know he ain’t,” Fanny assented, with emphasis.

“But I wouldn’t swap off my husband for a dozen of yours,” said Eva.

“Well, I wouldn’t swap off mine for a thousand of yours,” returned Fanny, sharply; and there might have been one of the old-time tussles between the sisters had not Eva’s violent, half-bitter sense of humor averted it.  She broke into a hard laugh.

“Good Lord,” she said, “I dun’no’ as I should want a thousand like Jim.  Seems to me it would be considerable care.”

Fanny began to speak, but checked herself.  She had heard rumors regarding Jim Tenny of late and had flown fiercely with denial at the woman who told her, and had not repeated them to her sister.