ent of the piazza steps, "now
that I've made up my mind, I don't want to be discouraged, and I don't
want to be helped. If I can't do for myself, I won't be done _for_."

After she got down through the maples, and well out of the gate, Burton
came and stood in the hall door-way, with his pipe in his mouth. "Saved
your distance, Polly, as usual; saved your distance."

"What would _you_ have done?" retorted his wife.

"I should have told her that I'd just got a letter from Ludlow this
morning, and that he begged and entreated me by everything I held dear,
to keep the poor girl from coming to New York, and throwing away her
time and health and money."

"You wouldn't!" cried Mrs. Burton. "You wouldn't have done anything of
the kind. It would have made her perfectly hate him."

Burton found his pipe out. He lighted a match and hollowed his hands
over it above the pipe, to keep it from the draught. "Well," he said,
avoiding the point in controversy, "why _shouldn't_ she perfectly hate
him?"

IX.

September was theoretically always a very busy month with Mrs.
Saunders. She believed that she devoted it to activities which she
called her fall work, and that she pressed forward in the fulfilments
of these duties with a vigor inspired by the cool, clear weather. But
in reality there was not much less folding of the hands with her in
September than there was in July. She was apt, on the coolest and
clearest September day, to drop into a chair with a deep drawn "_Oh_,
hum!" after the fatigue of bringing in an apronful of apples, or
driving the hens away from her chrysanthemums, and she spent a good
deal of time wondering how, with all she had to do, she was ever going
to get those flowers in before the frost caught them. At one of these
times, sitting up slim, graceful and picturesque, in the
feather-cushioned rocker-lounge, and fanning her comely face with her
shade-hat, it occurred to her to say to Cornelia, sewing hard beside
the window, "I guess you won't see them in blossom _this_ Christmas,
Nie."

"Not unless you cut them at the roots and send them to me by mail to
look at," said the girl.

Her mother laughed easily. "Well, I must really take hold and help you,
or you'll _never_ get away. I've put off everybody else's work, till
it's perfectly scandalous, and I'm afraid they'll bring the roof about
my ears, and yet I seem to be letting you do all your sewing. Well, one
thing, I presume I hate to have you go