e to be back at a certain hour to see
about employment, so she dared not stay longer, though it was with a
sinking heart that she left her sister to that grim old savage, with his
brusque lack of sympathy. However, the minister's wife reassured her with
stories of all the other girls from far and near whom he had cured by that
same foolish, silly method; so Hannah turned all her energies upon the
spinning which a neighbor-woman had set her to do.

Hired workers have been the same from the days of the Psalmist down to our
own, and Hannah, putting her whole heart into her work, accomplished, so
her surprised employer told her, twice as much spinning as any
serving-girl she had ever hired.

"And excellent good thread, too!" she said, examining it.

If Hannah kept up to _that_, she added, she could have all the work she
had time for. She gave the little girl two pennies--two real pennies, the
first money Hannah had ever earned. With a head spinning with triumph, she
calculated that at that rate she could earn fourpence a day!

She spent a farthing for some fish a little boy brought up from the river,
and a halfpenny for some fresh-baked bread, and a part of her precious
four-shilling piece for an iron fry-pan, or "spider." Laden with these,
she hurried back to see how Ann Mary had endured the old doctor's
roughness. She found her sister very tired, but, proudly anxious to show a
little spot, perhaps six feet; square, which she had spaded up with
intervals of rest.

"The herb-doctor says that I have done well, and that I will finish the
spading in a week, or perhaps even less," she said: "and I _like_ Master
Necronsett! He is a good old man, and I know that he will cure me. He
makes me feel very rested when he comes near."

Hannah felt a little pang to think that her sister should not miss her own
brooding care, but when Ann Mary cried out joyfully at the sight of the
food, "Oh, how hungry I am!" everything but pleasure was immediately
swept away from the little sister's loyal heart.

They cooked their supper--Hannah still had some of the cornmeal and the
flitch of bacon their Hillsboro friends had given them--and went to bed
directly on the queer, hard bed, with a straw tick and no feathers, which
Dr. Necronsett had prescribed, warmly wrapped up in the pair of heavy
Indian blankets he had loaned them. They were so close to the house that
they heard the old doctor moving around inside, and they could see the
light of