and if she still washed and cried and cried
and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of
some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to
have deserted her.

Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and
her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had
always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce
and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing,
worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance.
Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers
was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor
ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash
any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night
remittance for household expenses.

"Is your pain bad today, mother," asked Clara Belle, who, only lately
given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to
be a brief emergency.

"Well, there, I can't hardly tell, Clara Belle," Mrs. Simpson replied,
with a faint smile. "I can't seem to remember the pain these days
without it's extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent
me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince
pie; there's the doctor's drops to make me sleep, and these blankets
and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me
comp'ny! I declare I'm kind o' dazed with comforts. I never expected to
see sherry wine in this house. I ain't never drawed the cork; it does
me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd's bottle settin' on the
mantel-piece with the fire shinin' on the brown glass."

Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he
was leaving the house.

"She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin' to pull through all right, same
as the last time?" he asked the doctor nervously.

"She's going to pull right through into the other world," the doctor
answered bluntly; "and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take
the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life
about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die
easy!"

Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement,
sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while
solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and
when he ope