ll have
her sound and well in a little or no time. Why, when I was her age I
had a hackin' cough and a rackin' pain in my breast night and day, and I
fell off till my own blood kin didn't know me. Everybody give me up; but
old Miss Polly Flanders in Hancock, right j'inin' county from Greene,
she sent me word to make me some mullein tea, and drink sweet milk right
fresh from the cow; and from that day to this I've never know'd what
weak lungs was. I reckon you'll be mighty lonesome here," said Mrs.
Haley after William had returned with a fresh supply of batter-cakes,
"but you'll find folks mighty neighborly, once you come to know 'em.
And, bless goodness, here's one of 'em now!--Howdy, Emma Jane?"

A tall, ungainly-looking woman stood in the door of the dining-room
leading to the kitchen. Her appearance showed the most abject poverty.
Her dirty sunbonnet had fallen back from her head, and hung on her
shoulders. Her hair was of a reddish-gray color, and its frazzled and
tangled condition suggested that the woman had recently passed through a
period of extreme excitement; but this suggestion was promptly
corrected by the wonderful serenity of her face--a pale,
unhealthy-looking face, with sunken eyes, high cheek-bones, and thin
lips that seemed never to have troubled themselves to smile: a burnt-out
face that had apparently surrendered to the past, and had no hope for
the future. The Puritan simplicity of the woman's dress made her seem
taller than she really was, but this was the only illusion about her.
Though her appearance was uncouth and ungainly, her manner was
unembarrassed. She looked at Helen with some degree of interest; and to
the latter it seemed that Misery, hopeless but unabashed, gazed at her
with a significance at once pathetic and appalling. In response to Mrs.
Haley's salutation, the woman seated herself in the doorway, and sighed.

"You must be tired, Emma Jane, not to say howdy," said Mrs. Haley, with
a smile. The woman raised her right hand above her head, and allowed it
to drop helplessly into her lap.

"Ti-ud! Lordy, Lordy! how kin a pore creetur' like me be ti-ud? Hain't I
thes natally made out'n i'on?"

"Well, I won't go so fur as to say that, Emma Jane," said Mrs. Haley,
"but you're mighty tough. Now, you know that yourself."

"Yes'n--yes'n. I'm made out'n i'on. Lordy, Lordy! I thes natally hone
fer some un ter come along an' tell me what makes me h'ist up an' walk
away over yan'ter the railr