mised Betsy, yesterday, that
she should go out this morning, and Jane will be busy with the baby and
Harry."

Hatty was silent for a moment; a struggle was going on in her mind. At
length she looked up with a beautiful, bright expression on her face,
and said, "I will stay with Aunt Barbara, if you could trust her with
me. I do not want you to be kept at home."

Mrs. Lee knew the effort it must have cost her little girl to give up
the pleasure for which she had been so eagerly preparing, but she did
not refuse her kind offer.

"Thank you, my darling; I shall feel quite easy leaving Aunt Barbara
with you. 'I was sick and ye visited me,' our Saviour says, and then
adds, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye
have done it unto me.' That thought makes taking care of the sick doubly
pleasant. And now, darling, instead of putting on your own things, which
are all laid out so nicely, you will have to help me to get ready."

Hatty was glad to be kept very busy that she might not have a moment to
regret her choice, and she made herself so actively useful, that Mrs.
Lee was not at all too late in joining the group waiting for her in the
hall below.

"Why! are you not going, Hatty?" exclaimed Marcus, as his sister
appeared at her mother's side.

"Hatty is going to stay with Aunt Barbara. She may need some attention,
and I did not like to leave her alone," said Mrs. Lee.

Marcus looked up in surprise. He knew with what eagerness Hatty had
spoken in the morning of being at church, and could not but wonder at
the sudden change,--she looked so cheerful. One glance at the sweet,
bright expression of her face, convinced him of the generous motive that
had kept her at home. Marcus began to think there was some strength in
Hatty's new resolution to do right.

V.

Aunt Barbara's room was in the back building, and the entrance to it was
on the first landing to the front stairs. The old lady had chosen that
room, when she came to Mrs. Lee's, because no one had ever occupied it;
for she said, "I never did turn anybody out, and I never mean to."

There Aunt Barbara had collected about her all her favorite pieces of
old-fashioned furniture, her dark mahogany secretary-bureau, with its
bright brass rings held fast in the mouths of wrinkled old brass faces,
and her curtained bed, with all its festoons and fringes.

When Hatty stepped into the room, she saw Aunt Barbara sitting
bolt-upright in a stuff