sles," replied Thomas Henry, "and
I had to leave my haying to fetch the doctor."

"I want to know," said Patience.

Being the eldest born, Patience had appropriated to herself two rooms
in the rambling old farmhouse before her brother's marriage, from which
later comers had never dislodged her, and with that innate respect
for the rights and peculiarities of others which was common in the
household, she was left to express her secluded life in her own way. As
the habit of retirement grew upon her she created a world of her own,
almost as curious and more individually striking than the museum of
Cluny. There was not a square foot in her tiny apartment that did not
exhibit her handiwork. She was very fond of reading, and had a passion
for the little prints and engravings of "foreign views," which she wove
into her realm of natural history. There was no flower or leaf or fruit
that she had seen that she could not imitate exactly in wax or paper.
All over the walls hung the little prints and engravings, framed in
wreaths of moss and artificial flowers, or in elaborate square frames
made of pasteboard. The pasteboard was cut out to fit the picture, and
the margins, daubed with paste, were then strewn with seeds of corn and
acorns and hazelnuts, and then the whole was gilded so that the effect
was almost as rich as it was novel. All about the rooms, in nooks and on
tables, stood baskets and dishes of fruit-apples and plums and peaches
and grapes-set in proper foliage of most natural appearance, like enough
to deceive a bird or the Sunday-school scholars, when on rare occasions
they were admitted into this holy of holies. Out of boxes, apparently
filled with earth in the corners of the rooms, grew what seemed to be
vines trained to run all about the cornices and to festoon the pictures,
but which were really strings, colored in imitation of the real vine,
and spreading out into paper foliage. To complete the naturalistic
character of these everlasting vines, which no scale-bugs could assail,
there were bunches of wonderful grapes depending here and there to
excite the cupidity of both bird and child. There was no cruelty in
the nature of Patience, and she made prisoners of neither birds
nor squirrels, but cunning cages here and there held most lifelike
counterfeits of their willing captives. There was nothing in the room
that was alive, except the dainty owner, but it seemed to be a museum
of natural history. The rugs on the