When one day Miss Ludington took the gems from the box in which they had
been hidden away for half a lifetime, and hung them upon Ida, saying,
"These are yours, my sister," the girl protested, albeit with
scintillating eyes, against the greatness of the gift.
"Why, my darling, they are yours," replied Miss Ludington. "I am not
making you a gift. It was to you that mother gave them. I only return you
your own. When you left the world I inherited them from you, and now that
you have come back I return them to you."
And so the girl was fain to keep them.
Thus it had come about that before Ida had been in the house a week it
was no longer as a mystery, or, at least, as an awe-inspiring mystery,
but as an ineffably dear and precious reality, that her presence was
felt. Had a stranger chanced to come there on a visit, at that time, he
would doubtless have been struck with the fact that a young girl was the
central figure of the household, around whom its other members revolved;
but it is probable that this fact, in itself not unparalleled in American
households, would have seemed to such an observer sufficiently explained
by the unusual gentleness and beauty of the girl herself.
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