do my housework," he objected.
"I can't, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same."

"I am your nearest neighbor, and your only one, for that matter," said
Lyddy firmly; "its nothing more than right that I should look after
that sick child, and I must do it. I haven't got a thing to do in my
own house. I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who's been used to
children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them."

A calm settled upon Anthony's perturbed spirit, as he sat under the
apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage. "She isn't
any old maid," he thought; "she doesn't step like one; she has soft
shoes and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand
like that; and such a voice! I knew the moment she spoke that she didn't
belong in this village."

As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy's
voice, a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power. His sense
of touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in
remembrance,--the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth
nails, and firm round wrist. These charms would never have been noted
by any seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft
while Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds. It is these
saving stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind.

Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed
about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the
moment. Anthony's cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting
him every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from
Pleasant River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing.
Between times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and
although it was respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness
about it, you may be sure.

Lyddy came out to the apple-trees in about an hour, laughing a little
nervously as she said, "I'm sorry to have taken a mean advantage of you,
Mr. Croft, but I know everything you've got in your house, and exactly
where it is. I couldn't help it, you see, when I was making things tidy.
It would do you good to see the boy. His room was too light, and the
flies were devouring him. I swept him and dusted him, put on clean
sheets and pillow slips, sponged him with bay rum, brushed his hair,
drove out the flies, and tacked a green curtain up to the window.
Fift