ngham apron with long, narrow strings, with which
she hastily dried her tears. The sad news appealed also to Mercy
Crane, who looked across to the apple-trees, and could not see them
for a dazzle of tears in her own eyes. The spectacle of Sarah Ellen
Dow going home with her humble workaday possessions, from the house
where she had gone in haste only a few days before to care for a sick
person well known to them both, was a very sad sight.

"You sent word yesterday that you should be returnin' early this
afternoon, and would stop. I presume I received the message as you
gave it?" asked Mrs. Crane, who was tenacious in such matters; "but I
do declare I never looked to hear she was gone."

"She's been failin' right along sence yisterday about this time," said
the nurse. "She's taken no notice to speak of, an' been eatin' the
vally o' nothin', I may say, sence I went there a-Tuesday. Her sisters
both come back yisterday, an' of course I was expected to give up
charge to them. They're used to sickness, an' both havin' such a name
for bein' great housekeepers!"

Sarah Ellen spoke with bitterness, but Mrs. Crane was reminded
instantly of her own affairs. "I feel condemned that I ain't begun my
own fall cleanin' yet," she said, with an ostentatious sigh.

"Plenty o' time to worry about that," her friend hastened to console
her.

"I do desire to have everything decent about my house," resumed Mrs.
Crane. "There's nobody to do anything but me. If I was to be taken
away sudden myself, I shouldn't want to have it said afterwards that
there was wisps under my sofy or--There! I can't dwell on my own
troubles with Sister Barsett's loss right before me. I can't seem to
believe she's really passed away; she always was saying she should go
in some o' these spells, but I deemed her to be troubled with narves."

Sarah Ellen Dow shook her head. "I'm all nerved up myself," she said
brokenly. "I made light of her sickness when I went there first, I'd
seen her what she called dreadful low so many times; but I saw her
looks this morning, an' I begun to believe her at last. Them sisters
o' hers is the master for unfeelin' hearts. Sister Barsett was
a-layin' there yisterday, an' one of 'em was a-settin' right by her
tellin' how difficult 't was for her to leave home, her niece was
goin' to graduate to the high school, an' they was goin' to have a
time in the evening, an' all the exercises promised to be extry
interesting. Poor Sister Barse