a great help to her,--one that preached self-forgetfulness and
doin' for others to cure our own ills; but Parson Dimmick was a vague
person, well meanin', but very numb in his feelin's. I don't suppose at
that troubled time Joanna could think of any way to mend her troubles
except to run off and hide."

"Mother used to say she didn't see how Joanna lived without having
nobody to do for, getting her own meals and tending her own poor self
day in an' day out," said Mrs. Todd sorrowfully.

"There was the hens," repeated Mrs. Fosdick kindly. "I expect she soon
came to makin' folks o' them. No, I never went to work to blame Joanna,
as some did. She was full o' feeling, and her troubles hurt her more
than she could bear. I see it all now as I couldn't when I was young."

"I suppose in old times they had their shut-up convents for just such
folks," said Mrs. Todd, as if she and her friend had disagreed about
Joanna once, and were now in happy harmony. She seemed to speak with new
openness and freedom. "Oh yes, I was only too pleased when the Reverend
Mr. Dimmick invited me to go out with him. He hadn't been very long in
the place when Joanna left home and friends. 'Twas one day that next
summer after she went, and I had been married early in the spring. He
felt that he ought to go out and visit her. She was a member of the
church, and might wish to have him consider her spiritual state. I
wa'n't so sure o' that, but I always liked Joanna, and I'd come to be
her cousin by marriage. Nathan an' I had conversed about goin' out to
pay her a visit, but he got his chance to sail sooner'n he expected. He
always thought everything of her, and last time he come home, knowing
nothing of her change, he brought her a beautiful coral pin from a port
he'd touched at somewheres up the Mediterranean. So I wrapped the little
box in a nice piece of paper and put it in my pocket, and picked her a
bunch of fresh lemon balm, and off we started."

Mrs. Fosdick laughed. "I remember hearin' about your trials on the
v'y'ge," she said.

"Why, yes," continued Mrs. Todd in her company manner. "I picked her the
balm, an' we started. Why, yes, Susan, the minister liked to have cost
me my life that day. He would fasten the sheet, though I advised against
it. He said the rope was rough an' cut his hand. There was a fresh
breeze, an' he went on talking rather high flown, an' I felt some
interested. All of a sudden there come up a gust, and he gave a screec