Rebecca wanted some light blouses. Those she possessed had survived through one summer, and it was all that could be expected of them. So one day she ran down to Brennan's, during the half hour allowed for recreation, to leave the order. When she entered the sewing-room Mrs. Brennan was busy at her machine. Her ever-tired eyes struggled into a beaming look upon Rebecca.  
The young girl, with her rich body, seemed to bring a clean freshness into the room. For a moment the heavy smell of the miscellaneous materials about her died down in the nostrils of Mrs. Brennan. But this might have arisen from a lapse of other faculties occasioned by her agreeable surprise. So here was the new teacher who had so recently occupied her tongue to such an extent. She now beheld her hungrily.
 
Rebecca laid her small parcel of muslin upon the table, and became seated at the request of Mrs. Brennan.
 
"That's the grand day, ma'am," said she.
 
"'Tis the grand day indeed, miss," said Mrs. Brennan.
 
"Not nice, however, to be in a stuffy schoolroom."
 
"Indeed you might swear that, especially in such a school as Tullahanogue, with a woman like Mrs. Wyse; she's the nice-looking article of a mistress!"
 
Rebecca almost bounded in her chair. She had[Pg 98] fancied Mrs. Brennan, from the nature of her occupation, as a gabster, but she had not reckoned upon such a sudden and emphatic confirmation of her notion. Immediately she tried to keep the conversation from taking this turn, which, in a way, might bring it to a personal issue. But Mrs. Brennan was not to be baulked of her opportunity.
 
She began to favor her visitor with a biography of Mrs. Wyse. It was a comprehensive study, including all her aspects and phases. Her father and his exact character, and her mother and what she was. Her husband, and how the marriage had been arranged. How she had managed to gain her position. Everything was explained with a wealth of detail.
 
Rebecca out of the haze into which the garrulous recital had led her, spoke suddenly and reminded Mrs. Brennan of the passage of the half hour. Mrs. Brennan quickly fancied that the cause of the girl's lack of enthusiasm in this outpouring of information might have arisen from the fact that Mrs. Wyse had forestalled her with a previous attack. Thus, by a piece of swift transition, she must turn the light upon herself and upon the far, bright period of her young girlhood.
 
Now maybe Miss Kerr would like to look through the album of photos upon the table. This was a usual extension of feminine curiosity.... Rebecca opened the heavy, embossed album and began to turn over the pages.... There was a photo of a young girl near the beginning. She was of considerable beauty, even so far as could be discerned from this faded photo, taken in the early eighties. As Rebecca lingered over it, the face of Mrs. Brennan was lit by a sad smile.
 
[Pg 99]
 
"She was nice, and who might she have been?" said Rebecca.
 
"That was me when I was little and innocent," said Mrs. Brennan.
 
Rebecca looked from Mrs. Brennan to the photo, and again from the photo to Mrs. Brennan. She found it difficult to believe that this young girl, with the long, brown hair and the look of pure innocence in the fine eyes, could be the faded, anxious, gossipy woman sitting here at her labor in this room.... She thought of the years before herself and of all the tragedy of womanhood.... There was silence between them for a space. Mrs. Brennan appeared as if she had been overpowered by some sad thought, for not a word fell from her as she began to untie the parcel of blouse material her customer had brought. There was no sound in the wide noontide stillness save the light fall of the album leaves as they were being turned.... Rebecca had paused again, and this time was studying the photos of two young men set in opposite pages. Both were arrayed in the fashions of 1890, and each had the same correct, stiff pose by an impossible-looking pedestal, upon which a French-gray globe reposed. But there was a great difference to be immediately observed as existing between the two men. One was handsome and of such a hearing as instantly appeals to feminine eyes. It was curious that they should have been placed in such contiguous contradistinction, for the other man seemed just the very opposite in every way to the one who was so handsome. It could not have been altogether by accident, was Rebecca's thought, and, with the intuition of a woman at work in her, she proceeded to lay the foundations of a[Pg 100] romance.... Mrs. Brennan was observing her closely, and it grew upon her that she had been destined to bare her soul to this girl in this moment.
 
"That was the nice young man," said Rebecca, indicating............