assion and resentment. Then she added, "Well, I presume we can't have
the sympathy of all."

"Doesn't it look as if you had my sympathy, when I get into a car on
purpose to see you home--one of the principal agitators?" Ransom
inquired, laughing.

"Did you get in on purpose?"

"Quite on purpose. I am not so bad as Miss Chancellor thinks me."

"Oh, I presume you have your ideas," said Miss Birdseye. "Of course,
Southerners have peculiar views. I suppose they retain more than one
might think. I hope you won't ride too far--I know my way round Boston."

"Don't object to me, or think me officious," Ransom replied. "I want to
ask you something."

Miss Birdseye looked at him again. "Oh yes, I place you now; you
conversed some with Doctor Prance."

"To my great edification!" Ransom exclaimed. "And I hope Doctor Prance
is well."

"She looks after every one's health but her own," said Miss Birdseye,
smiling. "When I tell her that, she says she hasn't got any to look
after. She says she's the only woman in Boston that hasn't got a doctor.
She was determined she wouldn't be a patient, and it seemed as if the
only way not to be one was to be a doctor. She is trying to make me
sleep; that's her principal occupation."

"Is it possible you don't sleep yet?" Ransom asked, almost tenderly.

"Well, just a little. But by the time I get to sleep I have to get up. I
can't sleep when I want to live."

"You ought to come down South," the young man suggested. "In that
languid air you would doze deliciously!"

"Well, I don't want to be languid," said Miss Birdseye. "Besides, I have
been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep
very much; they were always round after me!"

"Do you mean on account of the negroes?"

"Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible."

Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was
carefully considerate, "I should like to hear all about that!"

"Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for
something else." And Miss Birdseye looked at him with a wandering,
tentative humour, as if he would know what she meant.

"You mean for the other slaves!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "You can
carry them all the Bibles you want."

"I want to carry them the Statute-book; that must be our Bible now."

Ransom found himself liking Miss Birdseye very much, and it was quite
without hypocrisy or a tinge too much of the local qua