much for them if she's anxious to be off," whispered
Liza to Rotha.

"Yes," continues Mrs. Garth, in her melancholy soliloquy, "I fret
mysel' the lee-lang day."

"She's a deal over slape and smooth," whispered Liza again. "What's it
all about? There's something in the wind, mind me."

"The good dear old creatur; and there's no knowin' now if she's
provided for; there's no knowin' it, I say, is there?"

To this appeal neither of the girls showed any disposition to respond.
Mrs. Garth thereupon applied the apron once more to her eye, and
continued: "Who wad have thought she could have been brought down so
low, she as held her head so high."

"So she did, did she! Never heard on it," Liza broke in.

Not noticing the interruption, Mrs. Garth continued: "And now, who
knows but she may come down lower yet--who knows but she may?"

Still failing to gain a response to her gloomy prognostications, Mrs.
Garth replied to her own inquiry.

"None on us knows, I reckon! And what a down-come it wad be for her,
poor creatur!"

"She's sticking to that subject like a cockelty burr," said Liza, not
troubling this time to speak beneath her breath. "What ever does she
mean by it?"

Rotha was beginning to feel concerned on the same score, so she said:
"Mrs. Ray, poor soul, is not likely to come to a worse pass while she
has two sons to take care of her."

"No good to her, nowther on 'em--no good, I reckon; mair's the pity,"
murmured Mrs. Garth, calling her apron once more into active service.

"How so?" Rotha could not resist the temptation to probe these
mysterious deliverances.

"Leastways, not 'xcept the good dear man as is gone, Angus hissel',
made a will for her; and, as I say to my Joey, there's no knowin' as
ever he did; and nowther is there."

Rotha replied that it was not usual for a statesman to make a will.
The law was clear enough as to inheritance. There could be no question
of Mrs. Ray's share of what had been left. Besides, if there were, it
would not matter much in her case, where everything that was the
property of her sons was hers, and everything that was hers was
theirs.

Mrs. Garth pricked up her ears at this. She could not conceal her
interest in what Rotha had said, and throwing aside her languor, she
asked, in anything but a melancholy tone, "So he's left all
hugger-mugger, has he?"

"I know nothing of that," replied Rotha; "but if he has not made a
will it cannot concern us at all. It's all ver