She left the door open, that she might hear approaching footsteps, and was presently lost in contemplation. She turned her head this way and that, taking pleasure in the gleam of light upon the shining coils of her hair, and in the rosy tint of her cheeks. Just above the corner of her mouth, there was the merest dimple.
Iris smiled, and then poked an inquiring finger into it. “I didn’t know I had that,” she said to herself, in surprise. “I wonder why I couldn’t have a glass like this in my room? There’s one in the attic—I know there is,—and oh, how lovely it would be!”
“It’s where I kissed you,” said Lynn, from the doorway. “If you’ll keep still, I’ll make another one for you on the other side. You didn’t have that dimple yesterday.”
“Mr. Irving,” replied Iris, with icy calmness, “you will kindly let me pass.”
He stepped aside, half afraid of her in this new mood, and she went down the hall to her own room. She shut the door with unmistakable firmness, and Lynn sighed. “Happy mirror!” he thought. “She’s the prettiest thing that ever looked into it.”
But was she, after all? Since the great mirror came over-seas, as part of the marriage portion of a bride, many young eyes had sought its shining surface and lingered upon the vision of their own loveliness. Many a woman, day by day, had watched herself grow old, and the mirror had seen tears because of it. The portraits in the hall and the old mirror had shared many a secret together. Happily, neither could betray the other’s confidence.
Iris, meanwhile, was finding such satisfaction as she might in the smaller glass, and meditating upon the desirability of the one in the attic. “I’ll ask Aunt Peace,” she thought, and knew, instantly, that she wouldn’t ask Aunt Peace for worlds.
“I’m vain,” she said to herself, reprovingly; “I’m a vain little thing, and I won’t look in the mirror any more, so there!”
She reviewed her humdrum round of daily duties with increasing pity for herself. Then, she had had only the books and the people who moved across their eloquent pages, but now? Surely, Cupid had come to East Lancaster.