Paul Ralston by Mary Jane Holmes

Miss Hansford had had many misgivings with regard to the wisdom of having sent for her niece. She had lived alone so long and her habits were so fixed that she dreaded the thought of a young person singing and whistling and banging doors and slatting her things round. She had tried to guard against some of these habits in her letter to Roger, but there was no knowing what a girl would do, and Lucy Potter's girl, too. Still she had committed herself and must make the best of it.

"I shall use her well, of course," she said many times, and as often as she dusted her mantel in the front room where Elithe's picture was standing she stopped and looked at the face and talked to it until she almost felt that it was the real Elithe whose dark eyes met hers so seriously. "She's pretty to look at and no mistake, but handsome is that handsome does, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating," she said more than once, while she busied herself with the room Elithe was to occupy.