ister always pronouncing her "a
fright," and manifesting a most unamiable spirit if anyone
complimented her in the least.

"What, that yaller-haired, white-face chit who went for you?"
rejoined Janet. "No such thing; but tell me now of your marm. How
sick is she, and what of the little boy? Is he much deformed?"

"Come in here," said Maude, leading the way into the parlor, and
drawing a chair close to Janet, she told all she deemed it necessary
to tell.

But the quick-witted Janet knew there was something more, and
casting a scornful glance around the room she said: "You are a good
girl, Maude; but you can't deceive an old girl like me. I knew by
the tremblin' way you writ that somethin' was wrong, and started the
first blessed morning after gettin' your letter. I was calculating
to come pretty soon, anyway, and had all my arrangements made. So I
can stay a good long spell--always, mebby--for I'm a widder now,"
and she heaved a few sighs to the memory of Mr. Joel Blodgett, who,
she said, "had been dead a year," adding, in a whisper, "but there's
one consolation--he willed me all his property," and she drew from
her belt a huge silver time-piece, which she was in the habit of
consulting quite often, by way of showing that "she could carry a
watch as well as the next one."

After a little her mind came back from her lamented husband, and she
gave Maude a most minute account of her tedious ride in a lumber-wagon
from Canandaigua to Laurel Hill, for the stage had left when
she reached the depot, and she was in too great a hurry to remain at
the hotel until the next morning.

"But what of that doctor--do you like him?" she said at last, and
Maude answered: "Never mind him now; let us see mother first, or
rather let me see to her dinner," and she arose to leave the room.

"You don't like him," continued Janet, "and I knew you wouldn't; but
your poor mother, I pity her. Didn't you say you was gettin' her
something to eat? She's had a good time waitin', but I'll make
amends by seein' to her dinner myself," and spite of Maude's
endeavors to keep her back she followed on into the disorderly
kitchen, from which Nellie had disappeared, and where old Hannah sat
smoking her pipe as leisurely as if on the table there were not
piles of unwashed dishes, to say nothing of the unswept floor and
dirty hearth.

"What a hole!" was Janet's involuntary exclamation, to which Hannah
responded a most contemptuous "Umph!" and thus was th