She was patting her hair into place and pulling out the long shoulder curl, when her mother came puffingly, slowly, up the loft ladder. Mother was getting old now. She was forty-seven,—heavy and placid. Her fat round face in its white cap with strings tied under her two chins, appeared in the loft opening. Abbie went over to her and took her hand, so that she would not fall. She saw that her mother had the calf-skin covered box in her hand.

It was several moments before Maggie Mackenzie could talk, puffingly, after the climb. “Abbie, I want ye to have the pearls. I’m savin’ the fan for Mary. Janet has the breast-pin, you know, and Belle the shawl. Belle always stuck ’n’ hung fer the shawl. And the pearls are fer you. Yell ne’er starve as long as ye have ’em.” She opened the little hairy-skinned chest and took out a small velvet box and from it the pearls themselves. She twined them through her short stubby fingers, their creamy shimmer incongruous in the plump peasant hand. “They were Basil’s fine mother’s. After she died, . . . Basil gave ’em to me in the days of wealth. Sure, but it wasn’t the wealth that brought us happiness. Many’s the time I’ve hated it . . . longin’ for a little house somewhere, . . . out of the wind ’n’ rain, . . . ’n’ not many things at all, at all. . . .”

There were tears in Abbie’s brown eyes when she took them. She held their creamy luster in the palm of her firm young hand. Into her mind came that old admiration for Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie. The touch of the jewels seemed to bring her near, to call up the vision of the lovely lady who was wearing them in the wide gold frame,—the lovely lady with the sweeping velvet and the long flowing plume and the fingers that tapered at the ends. Some day she was going to be like her. Some day she, too, would be lovely and gracious and wealthy. All of life was before her. All the future was hers. And that future now held Will, with his steady gray eyes,—Will Deal who was like a quiet harbor. Song, soft and meltingly tender came to her lips:

“Oh, the Lady of the Lea,

Fair and young and gay was she,”

She held the pearls up to the wine-colored merino and looked in the small oblong glass.

“Beautiful exceedingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

Then she turned to her mother. Her face was flushed, tender. “Thank you, Mother, . . . so much, . . . I’ll keep them always. But with the dark dress and the high neck, . . . I’ll just not wear them to-night. After awhile when Will and I are wealthy, I’ll wear them. And maybe we’ll have, . . .” Some reticences existing at the time, the blood swept Abbie’s face, “. . . maybe we’ll have a daughter some day and she can wear them on her wedding night, . . . in white satin . . . and all the things that go with it . . .”