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on the landing where the light is very dim. We had had it for years. It was painted when we were prosperous, but I had never examined it very closely. It was an awfully black sort of picture, and before Ruth's tea I could not have definitely said whether Father was standing or sitting in it. I didn't know that a row of lights could make such a difference. As I turned on the landing that night and came suddenly upon the painting I stopped stock-still. Why, it wasn't a picture! I didn't see the frame, nor the canvas, nor the paint. It was Father, dear Father himself, sitting at his roll-top desk down in the sitting-room. I could see every little wrinkle in his face, the crows-feet at the corners of his eyes, the fine, tired-looking lines along his forehead. He was sitting in his big leather armchair, and I remembered exactly how the leather had worn brown and velvety like that, along the edges. As usual he wore across his breast his heavy gold watch-chain, with the black onyx fob—the one he used to let me play with in church, when I was very little—and in one hand, which was resting easily along the arm of the chair, Father held his glasses just as he used to hold them when he took them off to glance up at me before I dashed off to dancing-school on Saturday nights. "Can't you keep that hair a little smoother?" he'd say to me, and "Isn't there a good deal of trimming on that dress? Your mother always wore plain things with a little white at her neck. Keep your tastes simple, my girl, and your clothes neat and nicely sewed." They were plain, homely words. Any man could say them, but as I remembered them that night, they seemed terribly sweet—almost sacred—and I