by contact with people, with events outside their groove, and they are
stone,--agatized men and women. Carry them where you please, after they
have reached middle or old age, and they will not change. There is no
magic water, a drop of which will restore to them the vitality and
pliability of their youth. They last well, such people,--as well, almost,
as agatized wood on museum shelves; and the most you can do for them is to
keep them well dusted.

Old Mrs. Carr belonged, in a degree, to this order of persons. Only the
coming of Mercy's young life into the feeble current of her own had saved
it from entire stagnation. But she was already past middle age when Mercy
was born; and the child with her wonderful joyousness, and the maiden with
her wondrous cheer, came too late to undo what the years had done. The
most they could do was to interrupt the process, to stay it at that point.
The consequence was that Mrs. Carr at sixty-five was a placid sort of
middle-aged old lady, very pleasant to talk with as you would talk with a
child, very easy to take care of as you would take care of a child, but,
for all purposes of practical management or efficient force, as helpless
as a baby.

When Mercy told her what the doctor had said of her health, and that they
must sell the house and move away before the winter set in, she literally
opened her mouth too wide to speak for a minute, and then gasped out like
a frightened child,--

"O Mercy, don't let's do it!"

As Mercy went on explaining to her the necessity of the change, and the
arrangements she proposed to make, the poor old woman's face grew longer
and longer; but, some time before Mercy had come to the end of her
explanation, the childish soul had accepted the whole thing as fixed, had
begun already to project itself in childish imaginations of detail; and to
Mercy's infinite relief and half-sad amusement, when she ceased speaking,
her mother's first words were, eagerly,--

"Well, Mercy, if we go 'n the stage, 'n' I s'pose we shall hev to, don't
ye think my old brown merino'll do to wear?"

Fortune favored Mercy's desire to sell the house. Stephen's friend, the
young minister, had said to himself many times, as he walked up to its
door between the quaint, trim beds of old-fashioned pinks and ladies'
delights and sweet-williams which bordered the little path, "This is the
only house in this town I want to live in." As soon as he heard that it
was for sale, he put on his h