she, with injured dignity. “I ain't pryin' into things that folks don't want me to know about; it wa'n't never my way. All is, I thought I'd like to know the truth of it, whether there was anything in them stories or not.”

“Oh, I'd jest as soon tell you,” rejoined Mrs. Field quietly. “I was jest a-thinkin'. As near as I can tell you, Mis' Babcock, Edward's father he let him have some money, and Edward he speculated with it on something contrary to his advice, an' lost it, an' that made the trouble.”

“Was that all?” asked Mrs. Babcock, with a disappointed air.

“Yes, I s'pose it was.”

“I want to know!” Mrs. Babcock leaned back with a sigh. “Well, there's another thing,” she said presently. “Somebody was sayin' the other day that you thought Esther caught the consumption from her husband. I wanted to know if you did.”

Mrs. Field's face twitched. “Well,” she replied, “I dun'no'. I've heard consumption was catchin', an' she was right over him the whole time.”

“Well, I don't know. I ain't never been able to take much stock in catchin' consumption. There was Mis' Gay night an' day with Susan for ten years, an' she's jest as well as anybody. I should be afraid 'twas a good deal likelier to be in your family. Does Lois cough?”

“None to speak of.”

“Well, there's more kinds of consumption than one.”

Mrs. Babcock made quite a long call. She shook Mrs. Field's hand warmly at parting. “I want to know, does Lois like honey?” said she.

“Yes, she's real fond of it.”

“Well, I'm goin' to send her over a dish of it. Ours was uncommon nice this year. It's real good for a cough.”

On her way home Mrs. Babcock met Lois Field coming from school attended by a little flock of children. Mrs. Babcock stopped, and looked sharply at her small, delicately pretty face, with its pointed chin and deep-set blue eyes.

“How are you feelin' to-night, Lois?” she inquired, in a tone of forcible commiseration.

“I'm pretty well, thank you,” said Lois.

“Seems to me you're lookin' pretty slim. You'd ought to take a little vacation.” Mrs. Babcock surveyed her with a kind of pugnacious pity.

Lois stood quite erect in the midst of the children. “I don't think I need any vacation,” said she, smiling constrainedly. She pushed gently past Mrs. Babcock, with the children at her heels.

“You'd better take a little one,” Mrs. Babcock called after her.

Lois kept on as if she did not hear. Her face was flushed, and her head seemed full of beating pulses.

One of the children, a thin little girl in a blue dress, turned around and grimaced at Mrs. Babcock; another pulled Lois' dress. “Teacher, Jenny Whitcomb is makin' faces at Mis' Babcock,” she drawled.

“Jenny!” said Lois sharply; and the little girl turned her face with a scared nervous giggle. “You mustn't ever do such a thing as that again,” said Lois. She reached down and took the child's little restive hand and led her along.

Lois had not much farther to go. The children all clamored, “Good-by, teacher!” when she turned in at her own gate.

She went in through the sitting-room to the kitchen, and settled down into a chair with her hat on.

“Well, so you've got home,” said her mother; she was moving about preparing supper. She smiled anxiously at Lois as she spoke.

Lois smiled faintly, but her forehead was frowning. “Has that Mrs. Babcock been here?” she asked.

“Yes. Did you meet her?”

“Yes, I did; and I'd like to know what she meant telling me I'd ought to take a vacation, and I looked bad. I wish people would let me alone tellin' me how I look.”

“She meant well, I guess,” said her mother, soothingly. “She said she was goin' to send you over a dish of her honey.”

“I don't want any of her honey. I don't see what folks want to send things in to me, as if I were sick, for.”

“Oh, I guess she thought I'd like some too,” returned her mother, with a kind of stiff playfulness. “You needn't think you're goin' to have all that honey.”

“I don't want any of it,” said Lois. The window beside which she sat was open; under it, in the back yard, was a little thicket of mint, and some long sprays of sweetbrier bowing over it. Lois reached out and broke off a piece of the sweetbrier and smelled it.

“Supper's ready,” said her mother, presently; and she took off her hat and went listlessly over to the table.

The table, covered with a white cloth, was set back against the wall, with only one leaf spread. There were bread and butter and custards and a small glass dish of rhubarb sauce for supper.

Lois looked at the dish. “I didn't know the rhubarb was grown,” said she.

“I managed to get enough for supper,” replied her mother, in a casual voice.

Nobody would have dreamed how day after day she had journeyed stiffly down to the old garden spot behind the house to watch the progress of the rhubarb, and how triumphantly she had brought up those green and rosy stalks. Lois had always been very fond of rhubarb.

She ate it now with a keen relish. Her mother contrived that she should have nearly all of it; she made a show of helping herself twice, but she took very little. But it was to her as if she also tasted every spoonful which her daughter ate, and as if it had the flavor of a fruit of Paradise and satisfied her very soul.

After supper Lois began packing up the cups and saucers.

“Now you go in the other room an' set down, an' let me take care of the dishes,” said Mrs. Field, timidly.

Lois faced about instantly. “Now, mother, I'd just like to know what you mean?” said she. “I guess I ain't quite so far gone but what I can wash up a few dishes. You act as if you wanted to make me out sick in spite of myself.”

“I thought mebbe you was kind of tired,” said her mother, apologetically.

“I ain't tired. I'm jest as well able to wash up the supper dishes as I ever was.” Lois carried the cups and saucers to the sink with a resolute air, and Mrs. Field said no more. She went into her bedroom to change her dress; she was going to evening meeting.

Lois washed and put away the dishes; then she went into the sitting-room, and sat down by the open window. She leaned her cheek against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields a bird was calling. Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her as if the blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future. She was ill, poor, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable certainty of it. It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden field of heaven.

She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted. Mrs. Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety when she saw her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually misplace the air.

Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.

“Don't shut the window, mother,” said Lois.

“I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child.”

“No, I sha'n't, either. I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother.”

Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.

“Goin' to meetin', mother?” Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.

“I thought mebbe I would.”

“I guess I won't go. I want to sew some on my dress this evenin'.”

“Sha'n't you mind stayin' alone, if I go?”

“Mind stayin' alone? of course I sha'n't. You get the strangest ideas lately, mother.”

Mrs. Field put on her black bonnet and shawl, and started. The bell tolled, and she passed down the village street with a stiff steadiness of gait. She