ved to have it out with somebody,
even if Rufus himself should prove to be the traitor. When, a few
minutes later, Mr. Terry, smoking his morning pipe, foregathered with
Ben in the stable yard, and asked him what he was after now, the answer
he gave was: "Lookin' araound fer somebody to whayul!" to which the
veteran replied: "Bin, my lad, it's aisy talkin'."

When the men were out of the kitchen, Mrs. Carruthers and her
sister-in-law came in to see the mad woman and her boy. The boy they
knew already, and had always been kind to, giving him toys and other
little presents, as well as occasional food and shelter. They were much
taken with the mother's quiet manners, and, having heard that she had
been a milliner, invited her to join them in the workroom. But, when
they unitedly arrived at the door of that apartment, they speedily
retired to the parlour, and there engaged in conversation. Mrs. Du
Plessis was upstairs, with the colonel to play propriety, sponging the
dominie's face and hands, and brushing his hair, as if he were her own
son. Every now and again Colonel Morton came up to the bedside, saying:
"Be kind to him, my deah Tehesa, and remembeh that he saved the life of
yoah poah sistah Cecilia's widowah." So the stately Spanish lady shook
up the wounded man's pillows, while the colonel put his arm around him
and held him up; and then, as he sank back again, she asked. "Are you
strong enough to have Cecile come up and read to you?" Wilkinson, sly
dog, as the Captain called him, said it was too much trouble to put Miss
Du Plessis to; but his objections were overruled. Soon a beatific vision
came once more on the scene, and Wordsworth was enthroned as the king of
poets. Miss Halbert and Mr. Perrowne were in the garden, and the
clergyman had a rose in his button hole which he had not plucked
himself. If he had not been in holy orders, he would have thought Miss
Fanny was awfully jolly. Then he said to himself, that holy orders don't
hinder a man being a man, and Miss Fanny was, really was, awfully jolly,
and boarding in the houses of uncultivated farmers was an awful bore.
But this was nothing to what was going on in the studiously avoided work
room. The lawyer's hands were being washed, because a voice from an
arch-looking face said that he was a big baby, and didn't know how to
wash himself. It was quite a big baby in size and aspect that was soaped
and glycerined, and had some other stuff rubbed into his hands by oth