't keep _you_ out. The doctor said she must have warm
drinks as soon as she was better. This is gruel."

"If it is done, away with you. Calamity improves you, don't it? You
seem in excellent spirits."

"First-rate; I can be somebody then."

CHAPTER XXV.

Before spring there were three public events in Surrey. A lighthouse
was built on Gloster Point, below our house. At night there was a
bridge of red, tremulous light between my window and its tower, which
seemed to shorten the distance. A town-clock had been placed in the
belfry of the new church in the western part of the village. Veronica
could see the tips of its gilded hands from the top of her window, and
hear it strike through the night, whether the wind was fair to bring
the sound or not. She liked to hear the hours cry that they had gone.
Soon after the clock was up, she recollected that Mrs. Crossman's
dog had ceased to bark at night, as was his wont, and sent her a note
inquiring about it, for she thought there was something poetical in
connection with nocturnal noises, which she hoped Mrs. Crossman felt
also. Fanny conveyed the note, and read it likewise, as Mrs. Crossman
declared her inability to read writing with her new spectacles, which
a peddler had cheated her with lately. She laughed at it, and sent
word to Veronica that she was the curiousest young woman for her age
that she had ever heard of; that the dog slept in the house of nights,
for he was blind and deaf now; but that Crossman should get a new dog
with a loud bark, if the dear child wanted it.

A new dog soon came, so fierce that Abram told Temperance that people
were afraid to pass Crossman's. She guessed it wasn't the dog the
people were afraid of, but of their evil consciences, which pricked
them when they remembered Dr. Snell.

The third event was Mr. Thrasher's revival. It began in February, and
before it was over, I heard the April frogs croaking in the marshy
field behind the church. We went to all the meetings, except Veronica,
who continued her custom of going only on Sunday afternoons. Mr.
Thrasher endeavored to proselyte me, but he never conversed with her.
His manner changed when he was at our house; if she appeared, the man
tore away the mask of the minister. She called him a Bible-banger,
that he made the dust fly from the pulpit cushions too much to suit
her; besides, he denounced sinners with vituperation, larding his
piety with a grim wit which was distastefu