onderful energy,' returned Rokesmith. 'You are as young as I
am.'

Betty Higden gravely shook her head. 'I am strong for my time of life,
sir, but not young, thank the Lord!'

'Are you thankful for not being young?'

'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again,
and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see? But never mind me;
'tis concerning Sloppy.'

'And what about him, Betty?'

''Tis just this, sir. It can't be reasoned out of his head by any powers
of mine but what that he can do right by your kind lady and gentleman
and do his work for me, both together. Now he can't. To give himself up
to being put in the way of arning a good living and getting on, he must
give me up. Well; he won't.'

'I respect him for it,' said Rokesmith.

'DO ye, sir? I don't know but what I do myself. Still that don't make it
right to let him have his way. So as he won't give me up, I'm a-going to
give him up.'

'How, Betty?'

'I'm a-going to run away from him.'

With an astonished look at the indomitable old face and the bright eyes,
the Secretary repeated, 'Run away from him?'

'Yes, sir,' said Betty, with one nod. And in the nod and in the firm set
of her mouth, there was a vigour of purpose not to be doubted.

'Come, come!' said the Secretary. 'We must talk about this. Let us take
our time over it, and try to get at the true sense of the case and the
true course, by degrees.'

'Now, lookee here, by dear,' returned old Betty--'asking your excuse
for being so familiar, but being of a time of life a'most to be your
grandmother twice over. Now, lookee, here. 'Tis a poor living and a
hard as is to be got out of this work that I'm a doing now, and but for
Sloppy I don't know as I should have held to it this long. But it did
just keep us on, the two together. Now that I'm alone--with even Johnny
gone--I'd far sooner be upon my feet and tiring of myself out, than a
sitting folding and folding by the fire. And I'll tell you why. There's
a deadness steals over me at times, that the kind of life favours and I
don't like. Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms--now, his mother--now,
his mother's mother--now, I seem to be a child myself, a lying once
again in the arms of my own mother--then I get numbed, thought and
sense, till I start out of my seat, afeerd that I'm a growing like the
poor old people that they brick up in the Unions, as you may sometimes
see when they let 'em out of the four walls to ha