erful obstinacy.

But although for many years Patience rarely left her home, until the
habit of seclusion had become as fixed as that of a nun who had
taken the vows, no one knew so well as she the news and gossip of
the neighborhood, and her power of learning or divining it seemed to
increase with her years. She had a habit of sitting, when her household
duties permitted, at a front window, which commanded a long view of the
river road, and gathering the news by a process peculiar to herself.
From this peep-hole she studied the character and destination of all the
passers-by that came within range of her vision, and made her comments
and deductions, partly to herself, but for the benefit of those who
might be listening.

"Why, there goes Thomas Henry," she would say (she always called people
by their first and middle names). "Now, wherever can he be going this
morning in the very midst of getting in his hay? He can't be going
to the Browns' for vegetables, for they set great store by their own
raising this year; and they don't get their provisions up this way
either, because Mary Ellen quarreled with Simmons's people last year.
No!" she would exclaim, rising to a climax of certainty on this point,
"I'll be bound he is not going after anything in the eating line!"

Meantime Thomas Henry's wagon would be disappearing slowly up the
sandy road, giving Patience a chance to get all she could out of it, by
eliminating all the errands Thomas Henry could not possibly be going to
do in order to arrive at the one he must certainly be bound on.

"They do say he's courting Eliza Merritt," she continued, "but Eliza
never was a girl to make any man leave his haying. No, he's never going
to see Eliza, and if it isn't provisions or love it's nothing short
of sickness. Now, whoever is sick down there? It can't be Mary Ellen,
because she takes after her father's family and they are all hearty. It
must be Mary Ellen's little girls, and the measles are going the rounds.
It must be they've all got the measles."

If the listeners suggested that possibly one of the little girls might
have escaped, the suggestion was decisively put aside.

"No; if one of them had been well, Mary Ellen would have sent her for
the doctor."

Presently Thomas Henry's cart was heard rumbling back, and sure enough
he was returning with the doctor, and Patience hailed him from the gate
and demanded news of Mary Ellen.

"Why, all her little girls have the mea