entirely lost.  In the conversation, where she bore a leading part as long as she remained in the room, her mind took a wide range, and visited more human interests than my wife was at first able to mention, though afterward she remembered so many that I formed the notion of something encyclopedic in its compass.  When she reached the letter Z, she rose and took leave of my wife, saying that now she must go and lie down, as it appeared to be her invariable custom to do (in behalf of the robust health which she had inherited unimpaired from a New England ancestry), at exactly half-past four every afternoon.  It was this, she said, more than any one thing that enabled her to go through so much as she did; but through the door which she left open behind her my wife heard Talbert’s voice saying, in mixed mockery and tenderness, “Don’t forget your tonic, mother,” and hers saying, “No, I won’t, Cyrus.  I never forget it, and it’s a great pity you don’t take it, too.”

It was our conclusion from all the facts of this call, when we came to discuss them in the light of some friendly gossip which we had previously heard, that the eldest daughter of the Talberts came honestly by her love of ruling if she got it from her grandmother, but that she was able to indulge it oftener, and yet not so often as might have been supposed from the mild reticence of her mother.  Older if not shrewder observers than ourselves declared that what went in that house was what Mrs. Talbert said, and that it went all the more effectively because what she said Talbert said too.

That might have been because she said so little.  When her mother left the room she let a silence follow in which she seemed too embarrassed to speak for a while on finding herself alone with my wife, and my wife decided that the shyness of the girl whose engagement was soon afterward reported, as well as the easy-goingness of the eldest son, had come from their mother.  As soon as Mrs. Talbert could command herself, she began to talk, and every word she said was full of sense, with a little gust of humor in the sense which was perfectly charming.  Absolutely unworldly as she was, she had very good manners; in her evasive way she was certainly qualified to be the leader of society in Eastridge, and socially Eastridge thought fairly well of itself.  She did not obviously pretend to so much literature as her mother, but she showed an even nicer intelligence of our own situation in Eastridge.  She spoke with a quiet appreciation of the improvement in the Banner, which, although she quoted Mr. Talbert, seemed to be the result of her personal acquaintance with the paper in the past as well as the present.  My wife pronounced her the ideal mother of a family, and just what the wife of such a man as Cyrus Talbert ought to be, but no doubt because Mrs. Talbert’s characteristics were not so salient as her mother’s, my wife was less definitely descriptive of her.