did. Instinctively her mother sensed this (perhaps, after all, she had

been eighteen herself, once) and by her increased watchfulness made Hardscrabble as remote and unattainable as Heaven.

"Where are you going, Charlotte?"

"Just out for a breath of air, mother."

"Take Carrie with you."

"Oh, mother, I don't want----"

"Take Carrie with you."

She stopped at home.

She had no tangible thing over which to mourn; not one of those bits of paper or pasteboard or linen or metal over which to keen; nothing to hold in her two hands, or press to her lips or wear in her bosom. She did not even possess one of those absurd tintypes of the day showing her soldier in wrinkled uniform and wooden attitude against a mixed background of chenille drapery and Versailles garden. She had only her wound and her memory and perhaps these would have healed and grown dim had not Isaac Thrift and his wife so persistently rubbed salt in the one and prodded the other. After all, she was little more than eighteen, and eighteen does not break so readily. If they had made light of it perhaps she would soon have lifted her head again and even cast about for consolation.

"Moping again!"

"I'm not moping, father."

"What would you call it then?"

"Why, I'm just sitting by the window in the dusk. I often do. Even before--before----"

"There's enough and to spare for idle hands to do, I dare say. Haven't you seen to-day's paper nor heard of what's happened again at Manassas that you can sit there like that!"

She knew better than to explain that for her Jesse Dick died again with the news of each fresh battle.

She became curiously silent for so young a girl. During those four years she did her share with the rest of them; scraped lint, tore and rolled bandages, made hospital garments, tied comforters, knitted stockings and mittens, put up fruit and jellies and pickles for the soldiers. Chicago was a construction camp. Regiments came marching in from all the states north. Camp Douglas, south of Thirty-first Street, was at first thick with tents, afterward with wooden barracks. Charlotte even helped in the great Sanitary Fairs that lasted a week or more. You would have noticed no difference between this girl and the dozens of others who chirped about the flag-decked booths. But there was a difference. That which had gone from her was an impalpable something difficult to name. Only if you could have looked from her face to that of the girl of the old photograph--that girl in the sweeping habit, with the plume, and the rose held carelessly in one hand--you might have known. The glow, the bloom, the radiance--gone.

People forget, gradually. After all, there was so little to remember. Four years of war change many things, including perspective. Occasionally some one said, "Wasn't there something about that older Thrift girl? Charlotte, isn't it? Yes. Wasn't she mixed up with a queer person, or something?"

"Charlotte Thrift! Why, no! There hasn't been a more self-sacrificing worker in the whole--wait a minute. Now that you speak of it, I do believe there was--let's see--in love with a boy her folks didn't approve and made some kind of public scene, but just what it was----"

But Isaac and Hetty Thrift did not forget. Nor Charlotte. Sometimes, in their treatment of her, you would have thought her still the eighteen-year-old innocent of the photograph. When Black Crook came to the new Crosby Opera House in 1870, scandalizing the community and providing endless food for feminine (and masculine) gossip, Charlotte still was sent from the room to spare her maidenly blushes, just as though the past ten years had never been.

"I hear they wear tights, mind you, without skirts!"

"Not all the way!"

"Not an inch of skirt. Just--ah--trunks I believe they call them. A horrid word in itself."

"Well, really, I don't know what the world's coming to. Shouldn't you think that after the suffering and privation of this dreadful war we would all turn to higher things?"

But Mrs. Thrift's caller shook her head so emphatically that her long gold filigree earrings pranced. "Ah, but they do say a wave of immorality always follows a war. The reaction it's called. That is the word dear Dr. Swift used in his sermon last Sunday.

"Reactions are all very well and good," retorted Mrs. Thrift, tartly, "but they don't excuse tights, I hope."

Her visitor's face lighted up eagerly and unbeautifully. She leaned still closer. "I hear that this Eliza Weathersby, as she's called, plays the part of Stalacta in a pale blue bodice all glittering with silver passamenterie; pale blue satin trunks, mind you! And pale blue tights with a double row of tiny buttons all down the side of the l----"

Again, as ten years before, Mrs. Thrift raised signaling eyebrows. She emitted an artificial and absurd, "Ahem!" Then--"Charlotte, run upstairs and help poor Carrie with her English exercise."

"She's doing sums, mother. I saw her at them not ten minutes ago."

"Then tell her to put her sums aside. Do you know, dear Mrs. Strapp, Carrie is quite amazing at sums, but I tell her she is not sent to Miss Tait's finishing school under heavy expense to learn to do sums. But she actually likes them. Does them by way of amusement. Can add a double column in her head, just like her father. But her English exercise is always a sorry affair.... M-m-m-m.... There, now, you were saying tiny buttons down the side of the leg----" Charlotte had gone.

When the war ended Charlotte was twenty-two. An unwed woman of twenty-two was palpably over-fastidious or undesirable. Twenty-five was the sere and withered leaf. And soon Charlotte was twenty-five--twenty-eight--thirty. Done for.

The patchwork silk quilt, laid aside unfinished in '61, was taken up again in '65. It became quite famous; a renowned work of art. Visitors who came to the house asked after it. "And how is the quilt getting on, dear Charlotte?" as a novelist is sounded about an opus with which he is struggling or a painter his canvas. Mrs. Hannan, the Lake Street milliner, saved all her pieces for Charlotte. Often there was a peck of them at a time. The quilt was patterned in blocks. Charlotte, very serious, would explain to the caller the plan of the block upon which she was at the moment engaged.

"This one has a purple satin center, you see. I always think purple is so rich, don't you? Then the next row will be white uncut velvet. Doesn't it have a sumptuous sound! Next blue velvet and the last row orange-colored silk." (No; not the same piece. Carrie had never relinquished her booty.) "Now, this next block is to be quite gay. It is almost my favorite. Cherry satin center--next, white velvet again--next, green velvet--and last, pink satin. Don't you think it will be sweet! I can scarcely wait until I begin that block."

The winged sweep of the fine black brows was ruffled by a frown of earnest concentration as she bent intently over the rags and scraps of shimmering stuffs. Her cheated fingers smoothed and caressed the satin surfaces as tenderly as though they lingered on a baby's cheek.

When, finally, it was finished--lined with turkey red and bound with red ribbon--Charlotte exhibited it at the Fair, following much persuasion by her friends. It took first prize among twenty-five silk quilts. A day of great triumph for Charlotte Thrift. The prize was a basket worth fully eight dollars.