ed the kitchen, which was a long, low, narrow room, with a
fireplace on the right, and two windows opposite, looking towards the
west. The floor was painted and very clean, but the walls were
unfinished, and the brown rafters were festooned with cobwebs. In the
middle of the room, the supper table was standing, but there was
nothing homelike in the arrangement of the many colored dishes and
broken knives and forks, neither was there any thing tempting to one's
appetite in the coarse brown bread and white-looking butter. Mary was
very tired with holding Alice so long, and sinking into a chair near
the window, she would have cried; but there was a tightness in her
throat, and a pressure about her head and eyes, which kept the tears
from flowing. She had felt so once before. Twas when she stood at her
mother's grave; and now as the room grew dark, and the objects around
began to turn in circles, she pressed her hands tightly to her
forehead, and said, 'Oh, I hope I shan't faint."

"To be sure you won't," said a loud, harsh voice, and instantly large
drops of water were thrown in her face, while the same voice
continued: "You don't have such spells often, I hope, for Lord knows I
don't want any more fitty ones here."

"No, ma'am," said Mary, meekly; and looking up, she saw before her a
tall, square-backed, masculine-looking woman, who wore a very short
dress, and a very high-crowned cap, fastened under her chin with bows
of sky-blue ribbon.

Mary knew she was indebted to this personage for the shower bath, for
the water was still trickling from her fingers, which were now engaged
in picking her teeth with a large pin. There was something exceedingly
cross and forbidding in her looks, and Mary secretly hoped she would
not prove to be Mrs. Parker, the wife of the overseer. She was soon
relieved of her fears by the overseer himself, who came forward and
said, "Polly, I don't see any other way but you'll have to take these
children into the room next to yourn. The baby worries a good deal,
and such things trouble my wife, now she's sick."

The person addressed as "Polly," gave her shoulders an angry jerk, and
sticking the pin on the waist of her dress, replied, "So I s'pose it's
no matter if I'm kept awake all night, and worried to death. But I
guess you'd find there'd be queer doins here if I should be taken
away. I wish the British would stay to hum, and not lug their young
ones here for us to take care of."

This was s