The Inlaid Box

Beauty

"'Beauty,'" read Grandmother Starr, with due emphasis upon every word, "'is the birthright of every woman,'" She looked up from the pages of The Household Guardian as she made this impressive announcement. Rosemary was busy in the kitchen, and Miss Matilda sat at the other window mending a three-cornered tear in last year's brown alpaca.

"'The first necessity of beauty is an erect carriage,'" she continued.

"That lets us out," commented Matilda, "not havin' any carriage at all."

"Frank used to say," said Grandmother, irrelevantly, "that he always had his own carriage until his Pa and me got tired of pushin' it."

"What kind of a carriage is an erect carriage?" queried Matilda, biting off her thread.

"I ain't never heard tell of 'em," replied Grandmother, cautiously, "but I should think, from the sound of it, that it was some kind that was to be driv' standin' up."

The Power of Ages

"Then I've seen 'em."

"Where?" Grandmother lowered her spectacles to the point where they rested upon the wart and peered disconcertingly at Matilda. The upper part of the steel frames crossed her eyeballs horizontally, giving her an uncanny appearance.

"At the circus, when Pa took us. After the whole show was over they had what they called a chariot race, and women driv' around the tent in little two-wheeled carts, standin' up."