mehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.

"Have you heerd anything yet, Kitty Fagan?" asked Nurse Byloe.

"Niver a blissed word," said she. "Miss Withers is upstairs with Miss
Bathsheby, a cryin' and a lamentin'. Miss Badlam's in the parlor. The
men has been draggin' the pond. They have n't found not one thing, but
only jest two, and that was the old coffeepot and the gray cat,--it's
them nigger boys hanged her with a string they tied round her neck and
then drownded her." [P. Fagan, Jr., Aet. 14, had a snarl of similar
string in his pocket.]

Mistress Fagan opened the door of the best parlor. A woman was sitting
there alone, rocking back and forward, and fanning herself with the
blackest of black fans.

"Nuss Byloe, is that you? Well, to be sure, I'm glad to see you, though
we 're all in trouble. Set right down, Nuss, do. Oh, it's dreadful
times!"

A handkerchief which was in readiness for any emotional overflow was here
called on for its function.

Nurse Byloe let herself drop into a flaccid squab chair with one of those
soft cushions, filled with slippery feathers, which feel so fearfully
like a very young infant, or a nest of little kittens, as they flatten
under the subsiding person.

The woman in the rocking-chair was Miss Cynthia Badlam, second-cousin of
Miss Silence Withers, with whom she had been living as a companion at
intervals for some years. She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more
or less, and looked not badly for that stage of youth, though of course
she might have been handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with women.
She wore a not unbecoming cap; frequent headaches had thinned her locks
somewhat of late years. Features a little too sharp, a keen, gray eye, a
quick and restless glance, which rather avoided being met, gave the
impression that she was a wide-awake, cautious, suspicious, and, very
possibly, crafty person.

"I could n't help comin'," said Nurse Byloe, "we do so love our
babies,--how can we help it, Miss Badlam?"

The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive
pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech.

"I never tended children as you have, Nuss," she said. "But I 've kn