ort of business,
but she was not melancholy. In truth, she felt better pleased with
herself than she had been in Rosville. She could not help thinking
that a chronic invalid would be a good thing for me. How was Ben
Somers? How much longer should I stay in Rosville? It would know us no
more forever when we left, and both of us would leave it at the same
time. Would I visit her ever? They lived in a big house with a red
front door. On the left was a lane with tall poplars dying on each
side of it, up which the cows passed every night. At the back of it
was a huge barn round which martins and pigeons flew the year through.
It was dull but respectable and refined, and no one knew that she was
tattooed on the arm.

I treasured this letter and all she wrote me. It was my first
school-girl correspondence and my last.

Relations of Alice came from a distance to pay her a visit. There was
a father, a mother, a son about twenty-one, and two girls who were
younger. Alice wished that they had stayed at home; but she was polite
and endeavored to make their visit agreeable. The son, called by his
family "Bill," informed Charles that he was a judge of horseflesh, and
would like to give his nags a try, having a high-flyer himself at
home that the old gentleman would not hear of his bringing along. His
actions denoted an admiration of me. He looked over the book I was
reading or rummaged my workbox, trying on my thimble with an air of
tenderness, and peeping into my needlebook. He told Alice that he
thought I was a whole team and a horse to let, but he felt rather
balky when he came near me, I had such a smartish eye.

"What am I to do, marm?" asked Jesse one morning when Charles was
away. "That ere young man wants to ride the new horse, and it is jist
the one he mus'n't ride."

"I will speak to Cousin Bill myself," she said.

"He seems a sperrited young feller, and if he wants to break his neck
it's most a pity he shouldn't."

"I think," she said when Jesse had retired, "that Charles must be
saving up that beast to kill himself with. He will not pull a chaise
yet."

"Has Charles tried him?"

"In the lane in an open wagon. He has a whim of having him broken to
drive without blinders, bare of harness; he has been away so of late
that he has not accomplished it."

Bill entered while we were talking, and Alice told him he must not
attempt to use the horse, but proposed he should take her pair and
drive out with me. I shook my