sand-colored hair. She was one of those women so lacking in feminine charm as to be set down, thoughtlessly, as almost sexless, but whom undisclosed fires of passion consume and who put up with almost anything to be married.
She had a clear head and an orderly disposition, together with a capacity for secretiveness which had made her worth thirty-five hundred a year to Lucas Cullen in those old days when demagogues were "investigating" his affairs. This salary, with its prospects of increase as the attacks upon Lucas became more savage, was sufficient to enable her to attract a lazy, good-looking youth named Merrill Kincheloe, seven years younger than herself. She married him and thereafter supported him, to her employer's exceeding disgust. Lucas never let her marriage change her name to him and, when he had been obliged to refer to Kincheloe, it had been always as "Miss Platt's husband." She had left the Cullen employ when Lucas "retired"; but a few years ago he had sent for her; and with her came her husband, for some of the time, at least. He spoke of himself as a "road salesman" to explain his long absences, and Miss Platt pretended that, when he went away, it was on business.
By the statement that everything was going well, Lucas meant that he had capable house servants,—two in number just now, a half-blood Indian woman named Mrs. Singlewolf and her daughter Naomi who wintered at St. Florentin after the summer boarding-houses in Petoskey closed. All but Miss Platt's husband were at the door as the sled drew up before the porch; and Ethel felt a rush of love as she saw her grandmother. She was a little woman, thin and shrunken now but erect, with spirit unbroken by her
