Janice laid the letter in her lap, saying, “’T will wait till I finish this row.” It was certainly a hard fate which forced her to delay the opening of the first letter she had ever received.
“’T will nothing of the sort,” said her mother, reaching out for the paper. “Art minded to read it on the sly, miss? There shall be no letters read by stealth. Give it me.”
“Oh, mommy,” begged the girl, desperately, “I’ll show it to you, but—oh—let me read it first, oh, please!”
“I think ’t is best not,” replied her mother. “Thy anxiety has an ill look to it, Janice.”
The girl handed the letter dutifully, and with an anxious attention watched her mother break it open, all pleasure in the novelty of the occurrence quite overtopped by dread of what was to come.
“What nonsense is this?” was Mrs. Meredith’s anything but encouraging exclamation. Then she read out:—
“’T is unworthy of you, and of your acceptance, but ’t is the fairest gift I could think of, and the best that I could do. If you will but put it in the frame you have, it may seem more befitting a token of the feelings that inspired it.”
Janice, unable to restrain her curiosity, rose and peered over her mother’s shoulder. From that vantage point she ejaculated, “Oh, how beautiful she is!”
What she looked at was an unset miniature of a young girl, with a wealth of darkest brown hair, powdered to a gray, and a little straight nose with just a suggestion of a tilt to it, giving the mignon face an expression of pride that the rest of the countenance by no means aided. For the remaining features, the mouth was still that of a child, the short upper lip projecting markedly over the nether one, producing not so much a pouty look as one of innocence; the eyes were brilliant black, or at least were shadowed to look it by the long lashes, and the black eyebrows were slender and delicately arched upon a low forehead.
“Art a nizey, Janice,” cried her mother, “not to know thine own face?”