rous
mother!" cried she, "I'LL give you all the money you want to spend or
give. I got another rise in my salary of five a month. Don't you worry."

"You ain't thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?"

"Don't you think it's best done and over with, after we've decided,
mother? You have worked so hard all your life I want to give you some
ease and peace now."

"But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn't be happy to do nothing, and I'd
get so fleshy!"

Tilly only laughed. She did not crave the show of authority. Let her
but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories. She was
imperious, but she was not arrogant. For months she had been pondering
how to give her mother an easier life; and she set the table for supper,
in a filial glow of satisfaction, never dreaming that her mother, in the
kitchen, was keeping her head turned from the stove lest she should cry
into the fried ham and stewed potatoes. But, at a sudden thought, Jane
Louder laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes.

"Here you are, Jane Louder"--thus she addressed herself--"mourning
and grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old
woman, and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance
the Lord gives you to help more'n you ever helped in your life! For
shame!"

A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines on
her face. "Why, it might be to save twenty lives," said she; but in the
very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched her heart again, and
she caught up the baby from the floor, where he sat in a wall of chairs,
and sobbed over him: "Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so
soon? I want every minnit!"

She never thought of disputing Tilly's wishes. "It's only fair," said
Jane. "She's lived here all these years to please me, and now I ought to
be willing to go to please her."

Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly's determination.
"She was the settest baby ever was," thought poor Jane, tossing on her
pillow, in the night watches, "and it's grown with every inch of her!"

But in the morning she surprised her daughter. "Tilly," said she at the
breakfast-table, "Tilly, I got something I must do, and I don't want you
to oppose me."

"Good gracious, ma!" said Tilly; "as if I ever opposed you!"

"You know how bad I have been feeling about the poor Russians------"

"Well?"

"And how I've wished and wished I could do something--something to
COUNT? I never