'ain't got anything to say against your watchin' with sick folks,
an' nursin' of 'em, if you've got the spare time an' strength," she
said to Jerome; "but if you do doctorin' for nothin' nobody 'll think
anything of it. Folks 'll jest ride a free horse to death, an' talk
about him all the time they're doin' of it. You might just as well be
paid for your work as folks that go ridin' round in sulkies chargin'
a dollar a visit. You want to get the mortgage paid up."

"It is almost paid up now, you know, mother," Jerome replied.

"How?" cried his mother, sharply. "By nippin' an' tuckin' an'
pinchin', an' Elmira goin' without things that girls of her age ought
to have."

"I don't complain, mother," said Elmira, with a sweet, bright glance
at her brother, as she gave a nervous jerk of her slender arm and
drew the waxed thread through the shoe she was binding.

"You'd ought to complain, if you don't," returned her mother. Then
she added, with an air of severe mystery, "It might make a difference
in your whole life if you did have more; sometimes it does with
girls."

Jerome did not say anything, but he looked in a troubled way from his
sister to his mother and back again. Elmira blushed hotly, and he
could not understand why.

It was very early in a spring morning, not an hour after dawn, but
they had eaten breakfast and were hurrying to finish closing and
binding a lot of shoes for Jerome to take to his uncle's for
finishing. They all worked smartly, and nothing more was said, but
Ann Edwards had an air of having conclusively established the subject
rather than dropped it. Jerome kept stealing troubled glances at his
sister's pretty face. Elmira was a mystery to him, which was not
strange, since he had not yet learned the letters of the heart of any
girl; but she was somewhat of a mystery to her mother as well.

Elmira was then twenty-two, but she was very small, and looked no
more than sixteen. She had the dreams and questioning wonder of
extreme youth in her face, and something beyond that even, which was
more like the wide-eye brooding and introspection of babyhood.

As one looking at an infant will speculate as to what it is thinking
about, so Ann often regarded her daughter Elmira, sitting sewing with
fine nervous energy which was her very own, but with bright eyes
fixed on thoughts beyond her ken. "What you thinkin' about, Elmira?"
she would question sharply; but the girl would only start and color,
and look a