ate was
entering with a bowl in her hands.

"I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink,"
she said.

"That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's
near supper-time, and I don't need it."

"It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate, gently, and put it
on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin.
"For your cold, Cassy," she repeated.

The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines
growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked, in a
queer, constrained voice.

"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
days."

"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked, softly, eagerly.

Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.

"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you
used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't--if
that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in
the East, where it's so damp."

Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said, in
reply:

"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt Kate;
and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But I
couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks now,
for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing and
dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any more,
and I had to come to George's father, with George's boy."

Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and was tactful, too. She did not understand
why Cassy, who had earned so much money all these years, should be so poor
now, unless it was that she hadn't saved--that she and George hadn't
saved. But, looking at the face before her, and the child on the bed, she
was convinced that the woman was a good woman; that, singer and dancer as
she was, there was no reason why any home should be closed to her, or any
heart should shut its doors before her. She guessed a reason for this
poverty of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her lay a hand on the little
woman's shoulders and look into her eyes.

"Cassy," she said, gently, "you was right to come here. There's tr