e a great deal of good,
and would a great deal more if I could only tell how we were
ever to [pay for it, I knew she would have said; but Dr.
Physick had evidently interposed; for the signature,]

"Your mutinous and obstreperous

"SISTER FANNY,"

was prefaced with a scratched-out involuntary "Rx," and
looked like a prescription.

I might be as sad as I would now; and who could wonder? I sat down where
I was standing on the door-step, and held the letter helplessly up to
Mrs. Johnson. It did seem to me now as if Fate was going to empty its
whole quiver of arrows at once upon me, and meant to kill me, body and
soul. But I have since thought sometimes, when I have heard people say,
Misfortunes never came single, and How mysterious it was! that God only
dealt with us, in that respect somewhat as some surgeons think it best
to do with wounded men,--perform whatever operations are necessary,
immediately after the first injury, so as to make one and the same
"shock" take the place of more. In this way of Providence, I am sure I
have repeatedly seen accumulated sorrows, which, if distributed through
longer intervals, might have darkened a lifetime, lived through, and in
a considerable degree recovered from, even in a very few years.

Mrs. Johnson's spectacles, meantime, were with eager curiosity peering
over the letter. "Dear heart!" cried she. "Do tell! My! What a
providence! There's Sister Nancy Newcome's Elviry jest got home this
arternoon from her situation to the South, scairt off with the
insurrections as unexpected as any_thing_. She's as smart a teacher as
ever was; an' the committee'd ha' gin her the school in a minute, an'
thank you, too; but she wuz alwuz a kind o' lookin' up'ards; an' I
s'pose she cal'lated it might for'ard her prospects to go down an' show
herself among the plantations. There's better opportoonities, they say,
sometimes for young ladies to git settled in life down there, owin' to
the scurcity on 'em. She'll be glad enough to fill your place, I guess,
till somethin' else turns up, for a fortni't or a month, or a term.
It'll give her a chance to see her folks, an' fix up her cloes, an' look
round her a spell. An' you can step into the cars o' Monday mornin' an'
go right off an' close that poor young creator's eyes, an' take your
time for 't. Seems as if I hearn tell your ma went off in a kind of a
gallopin' decline, didn't she?"

"No, she did not!" cried I, springing up