out of your mind, or you'll be down sick. Go straight
up-stairs and lie down, and I'll bring you up some of that nerve
medicine Dr. Wallace put up for you. Maybe you can get to sleep."

Lucy sobbed and laughed again. "Stop right where you are," said her
mother, with a wonderful, firm gentleness--"right where you are. Put
this thing right out of your mind. It's nothing you can help."

Lucy sobbed and laughed again, and this time her laugh rang so wildly
that the grocer's boy looked at her with rising alarm. He admired
Lucy. "I say," he said. "Maybe she ain't dead, after all. I heard all
this, but you never can tell anything by what folks say. You had
better mind your ma and put it all out of your head." The grocer's
boy and Lucy had been in the same class at school. She had never
noticed him, but he had loved her as from an immeasurable distance.
Both were very young.

Lucy lifted a beautiful, frightened face, and stared at him. "Isn't
it so?" she cried.

"I dare say it ain't. You had better mind your ma."

"I dare say it's all a rumor," said Sylvia, soothingly.

Mrs. Ayres echoed her. "All a made-up story, I think," said she. "Go
right up-stairs, Lucy, and put it out of your head."

Lucy crept up-stairs with soft sobs, and they heard a door close.
Then the boy spoke again. "It's so, fast enough," he said, in a
whisper, "but there ain't any need for her to know it yet."

"No, there isn't, poor child," said Sylvia.

"She's dreadful nervous," said Mrs. Ayres, "and she thought a lot of
Miss Farrel--more, I guess, than most. The poor woman never was a
favorite here. I never knew why, and I guess nobody else ever did. I
don't care what she may have intimated--I mean what you were talking
about, Sylvia. That's all over. Lucy always seemed to like her, and
the poor child is so sensitive and nervous."

"Yes, she is dreadful nervous," said Sylvia.

"And I think she ate too much candy yesterday, too," said Mrs. Ayres.
"She made some candy from a recipe she found in the paper. I think
her stomach is sort of upset, too. I mean to make her think it's all
talk about Miss Farrel until she's more herself."

"I would," said Sylvia. "Poor child."

The grocer's boy made a motion to go. "I wonder if they'll hang her,"
he said, cheerfully.

"Hang her!" gasped Mrs. Ayres. "She never did it any more than I did.
I went to school with Lucinda Hart."

"Why should she kill a steady boarder, when the hotel has run down so
and sh