rs. Carr, eagerly. "Is she goin' to be
company for me?"

"I could not tell, mother," replied Mercy, indifferently; "for it was just
their tea-hour, and I did not stay a minute,--only just to say, How d'ye
do, and Good-evening. But Mr. White says she is very lonely; people don't
go to see her much: so I should think she would be very glad of somebody
her own age in the house, to come and sit with her. She looks very ill,
poor soul. She hasn't been out of her bed, except when she was lifted, for
eight years."

"Dear me! dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Carr. "Oh, I hope I'll never be that
way. What'u'd you ever do child, if I'd get to be like that?"

"No danger, mother dear, of your ever being like Mrs. White," said Mercy,
with an incautious emphasis, which, however, escaped Mrs. Carr's
recognition.

"Why, how can you be so sure I mightn't ever get into jest so bad a way,
child? There's none of us can say what diseases we're likely to hev or
not to hev. Now there's never been a case o' lung trouble in our family
afore mine, not 's fur back 's anybody kin trace it out; 'n' there's been
two cancers to my own knowledge; 'n' I allus hed a most awful dread o'
gettin' a cancer. There ain't no death like thet. There wuz my mother's
half-sister, Keziah,--she that married Elder Swift for her second husband.
She died o' cancer; an' her oldest boy by her first husband he hed it in
his face awful. But he held on ter life 's ef he couldn't say die, nohow;
and I tell yer, Mercy, it wuz a sight nobody'd ever forget, to see him
goin' round the street with one side o' his face all bound up, and his
well eye a rolling round, a-doin' the work o' two. He got so he couldn't
see at all out o' either eye afore he died, 'n' you could hear his
screeches way to our house. There wouldn't no laudalum stop the pain a
mite."

"Oh, mother! don't! don't!" exclaimed Mercy. "It is too dreadful to talk
about. I can't bear to think that any human being has ever suffered so.
Please don't ever speak of cancers again."

Mrs. Carr looked puzzled and a little vexed, as she answered, "Well, I
reckon they've got to be talked about a good deal, fust and last, 's long
's there's so many dies on 'em. But I don't know 's you 'n' I've got any
call to dwell on 'em much. You've got dreadful quick feelin's, Mercy,
ain't you? You allus was orful feelin' for everybody when you wuz little,
'n' I don't see 's you've outgrowed it a bit. But I expect it's thet makes
you sech fri