't had any call to charge my mind about it,' and then I'd
begin tryin' to ahgue him out of it, and keep a hectorin', till he'd
say, 'Well, I'm not askin' you to do it,' and that's all I could get
out of him. But I see all the while 't he wanted me to do it, whateva he
asked, and now I've got to do it when it can't give him any pleasure."
Mrs. Lander put up her black-bordered handkerchief and sobbed into it,
and Clementina waited till her grief had spent itself; then she gave her
a fan, and Mrs. Lander gratefully cooled her hot wet face. The children
had found the noises of her affliction and the turbid tones of her
monologue annoying, and had gone off to play in the woods; Claxon kept
incuriously about the work that Clementina had left him to; his wife
maintained the confidence which she always felt in Clementina's ability
to treat with the world when it presented itself, and though she was
curious enough, she did not offer to interrupt the girl's interview with
Mrs. Lander; Clementina would know how to behave.

Mrs. Lander, when she had refreshed herself with the fan, seemed to
get a fresh grip of her theme, and she told Clementina all abort Mr.
Lander's last sickness. It had been so short that it gave her no time to
try the climate of Colorado upon him, which she now felt sure would have
brought him right up; and she had remembered, when too late, to give him
a liver-medicine of her own, though it did not appear that it was his
liver which was affected; that was the strange part of it. But, brief
as his sickness was, he had felt that it was to be his last, and had
solemnly talked over her future with her, which he seemed to think would
be lonely. He had not named Clementina, but Mrs. Lander had known well
enough what he meant; and now she wished to ask her, and her father and
mother, how they would all like Clementina to come and spend the winter
with her at Boston first, and then further South, and wherever she
should happen to go. She apologized for not having come sooner upon this
errand; she had resolved upon it as soon as Mr. Lander was gone, but she
had been sick herself, and had only just now got out of bed.

Clementina was too young to feel the pathos of the case fully, or
perhaps even to follow the tortuous course of Mrs. Lander's motives, but
she was moved by her grief; and she could not help a thrill of pleasure
in the vague splendor of the future outlined by Mrs. Lander's proposal.
For a time she had thoug