the
sunny kitchen, muttering to herself: "Wall, I vow! travelin' over the
country all alone, 'n' not knee-high to a toad! They're send in' out
awful young tramps this season, but they sha'n't go away hungry, if I
know it."

Accordingly, she set out a plentiful supply of bread and butter,
gingerbread, pie, and milk, put a tin plate of cold hash in the shed for
Rags, and swept him out to it with a corn broom; and, telling the
children comfortably to cram their "everlastin' little bread-baskets
full," returned to the sitting-room.

"Now, whatever makes you so panicky, Vildy? Didn't you never see a tramp
before, for pity's sake? And if you're scar't for fear I can't handle
'em alone, why, Jabe 'll be comin' along soon. The prospeck of gittin'
to bed's the only thing that'll make him 'n' Maria hurry; 'n' they'll
both be cal'latin' on that by this time!"

"Samanthy Ann, the first question that that boy asked me was, 'If Miss
Martha Cummins lived here.' Now, what do you make of that?"

Samantha looked as astonished as anybody could wish. "Asked if Marthy
Cummins lived here? How under the canopy did he ever hear Marthy's name?
Wall, somebody told him to ask, that's all there is about it; and what
harm was there in it, anyhow?"

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know; but the minute that boy looked up at me
and asked for Martha Cummins, the old trouble, that I thought was dead
and buried years ago, started right up in my heart and begun to ache
just as if it all happened yesterday."

"Now keep stiddy, Vildy; what could happen?" urged Samantha.

"Why, it flashed across my mind in a minute," and here Miss Vilda
lowered her voice to a whisper, "that perhaps Martha's baby didn't die,
as they told her."

"But, land o' liberty, s'posin' it didn't! Poor Marthy died herself more
'n twenty years ago."

"I know; but supposing her baby didn't die; and supposing it grew up and
died, and left this little girl to roam round the world afoot and
alone?"

"You're cal'latin' dreadful close, 'pears to me; now, don't go s'posin'
any more things. You're makin' out one of them yellow-covered books,
sech as the summer boarders bring out here to read; always chock full of
doin's that never would come to pass in this or any other Christian
country. You jest lay down and snuff your camphire, an' I'll go out an'
pump that boy drier 'n a sand heap!"

Now, Miss Avilda Cummins was unmarried by every implication of her
being, as Henry James would sa