Synopsis

Miss Philura Rice tied her faded bonnet-strings under her faded chin with hands that trembled a little; then she leaned forward and gazed anxiously at the reflection which confronted her. A somewhat pinched and wistful face it was, with large, light-lashed blue eyes, arched over with a mere pretense at eyebrows. More than once in her twenties Miss Philura had ventured to eke out this scanty provision of Nature with a modicum of burned match stealthily applied in the privacy of her virgin chamber. But the twenties, with their attendant dreams and follies, were definitely past; just how long past no one knew exactly—Miss Philura never informed the curious on this point. As for the insufficient eyebrows, they symbolized, as it were, a meagre and restricted life, vaguely acknowledged as the dispensation of an obscurely hostile but consistent Providence; a Providence far too awful and exalted—as well as hostile—to interest itself benignantly in so small and neutral a personality as stared back at her from the large, dim mirror of Cousin Maria Van De's third-story back bedroom. Not that Miss Philura ever itted such dubious thoughts to the select circle of her conscious reflect...