In the box lay a pin and ring. On the back of the pin was braided
hair, and letters curiously intertwined. The young girl slipped the
ring on her own finger once more, and smiled. Then she took it off,
with a sigh that had no pain in it, and looked at the name engraved
inside,--DORCAS FOX.
Whoever saw this name in the town records would naturally image to
himself the town tailoress or nurse, or somebody's single sister
who had been wise too long,--somebody tall, a little bent, and
bony,--somebody weather-beaten and determined--looking, with a sharp,
shrewd glance of a gray eye that said you could not possibly get the
better of her and so need not try,--somebody who goes out unattended
and fearless at night; for, as she very properly observes, "Who'd want
to speak to _me_?"
This might have described the original owner of the pin and ring, who
had died years before, and left the ornaments for her namesake and
niece, when she was too young to remember or care for her, but not the
niece herself. She was young, blooming, twenty-two, and the belle of
the country-village where she dwelt.
The bed-room where the girl stood and meditated, after her fashion,
was six feet by ten in dimensions, and the oval mirror before which
she stood was six inches by ten.
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