with a renewal of energy that
must have surprised Mrs. Johnson. "Nothing of the kind! I will take my
letter again, if you please. My sister has a cold,--only a cold. But
where can I see Miss Newcome?"

"To home; but I declare, you can't feel hardly fit to start off ag'in.
Jest you step in an' sup your tea afore it's any colder, I've had mine;
an' I'll step right back over there, an' see about it for ye."

Mrs. Johnson, if coarse, was kind; and that time it would be hard to say
whether her kindness or her coarseness did me the most good; for the
latter roused me, between indignation and horror, to a strong reaction.

Mrs. Johnson, I said to myself, knew no more of the matter than I.
Nobody said a word, in the letter, of Fanny's being very ill; and there
had been, as I now considered, to the best of my recollection and
information, no consumption in our family. My father died when I was
five years old, as I had always heard of chronic bronchitis and nervous
dyspepsia, or, in other words, of over-work and under-pay. An early
marriage to a clergyman, who had no means of support but a salary of
five hundred dollars dependent on his own health and the tastes of a
parish, early widowhood, two helpless little girls to rear, years of
hard work, anxieties, and embarrassments, a typhoid fever, with no
physician during the precious first few days, during which, if she had
sent for him, Dr. Physick always believed he might have saved her, a
sudden sinking and no rallying,--it took all that to kill poor, dear,
sweet mamma! She had a magnificent constitution, and bequeathed much of
it to me.

Else I do not think I could have borne, and recovered from, those three
days even as well as I did. The cars did not run on Sunday. That was so
dreadful! But there was no other hindrance in my way. Everybody was very
kind. The school committee could not meet in form "on the Sabbath"; but
the chairman, who was Miss Elvira Newcome's brother-in-law, "sounded the
other members arter meetin', jest as he fell in with 'em, casooally as
it were," and ascertained that they would offer no objection to my
exchange. He advanced my pay himself, and brought it to me soon after
sunrise Monday morning; so that I was more than sufficiently provided
with funds for my journey.

Mrs. Johnson forced upon me a suspicious-looking corked bottle of
innocent tea,--one of the most sensible travelling companions, as I
found before the day was over, that a wayfarer can