t crush? Have some of
the apple sass? It's new--made this morning. Dew have some," she
continued, as Madam Conway shook her head. "Mebby it's better than
it looks. Seem's ef you wan't goin' to eat nothin'. Betsy Jane,
now you're up after the crush, fetch them china sassers for the
cowcumbers. Like enough she'll eat some of them."

But, affecting a headache, Madam Conway declined everything save
the green tea and a Boston cracker, which, at the first mention of
headache, the distressed woman had brought her. Suddenly remembering
Mike, who, having fixed the carriage, was fast asleep on a wheelbarrow
under the woodshed, she exclaimed: "For the land of massy, if I hain't
forgot that young gentleman! Go, William, and call him this minute.
Are you sick at your stomach?" she asked, turning to Madam Conway,
who at the thought of eating with her drunken coachman had uttered
an exclamation of disgust. "Go, Betsy Jane, and fetch the camphire,
quick!"

But Madam Conway did not need the camphor, and so she said, adding
that Mike was better where he was. Mike thought so too, and refused
to come, whereupon the woman insisted that he must. "There was room
enough," she said, "and no kind of sense in Betsy Jane's taking up the
hull side of the table with them rattans. She could set nearer the
young lady."

"Certainly," answered Maggie, anxious to see how the "rattans" would
manage to squeeze in between herself and the table-leg, as they would
have to do if they came an inch nearer.

This feat could not be done, and in attempting it Betsy Jane upset
Maggie's tea upon her handsome traveling dress, eliciting from her
mother the exclamation, "Betsy Jane Douglas, you allus was the
blunderin'est girl!"

This little accident diverted the woman's mind from Mike, while
Madam Conway, starting at the name of Douglas, thought to herself:
"Douglas!--Douglas! I did not suppose 'twas so common a name. But then
it don't hurt George any, having these creatures bear his name."

Dinner being over, Madam Conway and Maggie returned to the parlor,
where, while the former resumed her chair, the latter amused herself
by examining the books and odd-looking daguerreotypes which lay upon
the table.

"Oh, grandmother!" she almost screamed, bounding to that lady's
side, "as I live, here's a picture of Theo and George Douglas taken
together," and she held up a handsome casing before the astonished
old lady, who, donning her golden spectacles in a twinkling,