they meant to Evelina; and she did not dream herself, for her heart was always veiled to her own eyes, like the face of a nun.  The roses and pinks, the poppies and heart’s-ease, were to this maiden-woman, who had innocently and helplessly outgrown her maiden heart, in the place of all the loves of life which she had missed.  Her affections had forced an outlet in roses; they exhaled sweetness in pinks, and twined and clung in honeysuckle-vines.  The daffodils, when they came up in the spring, comforted her like the smiles of children; when she saw the first rose, her heart leaped as at the face of a lover.

She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found a little single side-track of love, which gave her still a zest in the journey of life.  Even in the winter Evelina had her flowers, for she kept those that would bear transplanting in pots, and all the sunny windows in her house were gay with them.  She would also not let a rose leaf fall and waste in the garden soil, or a sprig of lavender or thyme.  She gathered them all, and stored them away in chests and drawers and old china bowls—­the whole house seemed laid away in rose leaves and lavender.  Evelina’s clothes gave out at every motion that fragrance of dead flowers which is like the fragrance of the past, and has a sweetness like that of sweet memories.  Even the cedar chest where Evelina’s mother’s blue bridal array was stored had its till heaped with rose leaves and lavender.

When Evelina was nearly seventy years old the old nurse who had lived with her her whole life died.  People wondered then what she would do.  “She can’t live all alone in that great house,” they said.  But she did live there alone six months, until spring, and people used to watch her evening lamp when it was put out, and the morning smoke from her kitchen chimney.  “It ain’t safe for her to be there alone in that great house,” they said.

But early in April a young girl appeared one Sunday in the old Squire’s pew.  Nobody had seen her come to town, and nobody knew who she was or where she came from, but the old people said she looked just as Evelina Adams used to when she was young, and she must be some relation.  The old man who had used to look across the meeting-house at Evelina, over forty years ago, looked across now at this young girl, and gave a great start, and his face paled under his gray beard stubble.  His old wife gave an anxious, wondering glance at him, and crammed a peppermint into his hand.  “Anything the matter, father?” she whispered; but he only gave his head a half-surly shake, and then fastened his eyes straight ahead upon the pulpit.  He had reason to that day, for his only son, Thomas, was going to preach his first sermon therein as a candidate.  His wife ascribed his nervousness to that.  She put a peppermint in her own mouth and sucked it comfortably.  “That’s all ’t is,” she thought to herself.  “Father always was easy worked up,” and