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 and a charred iron-holder to lift the beef onto the top of the stove. It was nearly enough done, she guessed. Then she sat down, and leaning her head on her hand, supported by her elbow resting on the kitchen table, she closed her eyes. She wished she could cry. Ever since Esther had died all her eyes ever did was just to smart. All her heart ever did, too! Esther had died nearly a year ago, now. She ought to be getting used to it by this time. But she wasn't getting used to it! There had been something so comforting—so completing about Esther, as if she had at last found a part of herself, for which she had been looking for a long while, and it made her whole.

Esther and Sheilah had been as alike as two flowers on the same stem. Esther had had corn-flower blue eyes and corn-silk gold hair. When she was two years old Sheilah had cut off one of the transparent curls of fragile gold, that drifted around her head as light as floating bubbles, and placed it in an envelope with a curl of her own, which her mother had cut at the same age. And now she couldn't tell the two pressed circles apart. They were as alike as two petals of the same flower.

Not only did the blue and gold match, but other things, such as smiles, pitch of voice, and set of head, and a certain poise and dignity that graced even a high-chair. And such daintiness! How Es-