to walk, and meantime perfect quiet was strictly enforced. Hepsy volunteered her services as nurse, and discharged faithfully her assumed duties. But Rhoda grew restless and feverish, and finally became so much worse that we began seriously to fear lest she had received some internal injury.

One afternoon I was sitting with her when the doctor came. He spoke cheeringly, as usual; but when I went to the door with him, he said the child had some mental trouble, the disposal of which would be more effective than all his medicines, and that I must endeavor to ascertain and remove it.

Without much difficulty I succeeded. She was haunted with the fear, that, in her present useless condition, she would be sent away. I convinced her that no one would do this during the absence of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, and that before their return she would probably be able to resume her work.

"I know I'll sleep real good to-night," said Rhoda. "You see I'm awful tired of going round so from one place to another. It's just been from pillar to post ever since I can remember."

"Well," said I, "you may be sure that you will never be sent away from this house for sickness nor for accident. So now set your poor little heart at rest about it."

The blue eyes looked at me with an expression different from any I had seen in them before. They were soft, pretty eyes, too, now that the hair was suffered to lie around the face, instead of being stretched back as tightly as possible. One good result had come from the wood-shed catastrophe: the high comb had been shattered into irretrievable fragments. I inly determined that none like it should ever take its place.

Since Miss Stackpole said it was impossible for her to remain till the return of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, I cannot say that, under the circumstances, we particularly desired her to prolong her visit. It may be that grandmother had too little patience with her; certainly they two were not congenial spirits. However, by means of taking her to see every relative we had in the vicinity, we disposed of the time very satisfactorily. She remained a few days longer than she had intended, so that Dorothy, who is unapproachable in ironing, might do up her muslin dresses.

"I have changed my mind about Hepsy," said she the night before she left. "I think now it is Rhoda."

"What is Rhoda?" asked grandmother.

"That has taken the coral pin."

Grandmother compressed her lips, but her eyes spoke volumes.

"Miss Stackpole," said I, "it is true that Rhoda has not been here long; still, I have a perfect conviction of her honesty."

"Very amiable and generous of you to feel so, Kate," said Miss Stackpole; "perhaps a few years ago, when I was of your age, I should have thought just the same."

"Kate is twenty next September," said grandmother, who could refrain no longer. "I never forget anybody's age. It is quite possible that she will change in the course of twenty-five or thirty years."

We all knew this to be throwing down the gauntlet. Miss Stackpole did not, however, take it up. She said she intended to lay the circumstances, exactly as they were, before Mrs. Perkinpine; and if that lady would allow her, she should pay for the pin. She thought, though, it might be her duty to talk with Rhoda; perhaps, even at the eleventh hour, the girl might be induced to give it up.

"I will take it upon me, Lucretia," said grandmother, "to object to your talking with Rhoda. Even if we have not among us penetration enough to see that she is honest as daylight, it does not follow that we should be excusable in doing anything to make that forlorn orphan child less happy than she is now. You visit about a great deal, Lucretia. I hope, for the sake of all your friends, that you don't everywhere scatter your suspicions broadcast as you have done here. I am older than you, as you will admit, and I have never known any good come of unjust accusations."

After Miss Stackpole went up stairs that night, she folded the black silk dress she had been wearing to lay it in her trunk; and in doing that, she found the missing pin on the inside of the waist-lining, just where she had put it herself. Then she remembered having stuck it there one morning in a hurry, to prevent any one being tempted with seeing it lie around.

And Rhoda never knew what an escape she had.

"I do wish there was something for me to do," said Rhoda; "I never was used to lying abed doing nothing. It most tuckers me out."

"Cannot you read, Rhoda?" I asked.

"Yes, I can read some. I can't read words, but I can tell some of the letters."

"Have you never gone to school?"

"No; I always had to work. Poor folks have got to work, you know."

"Yes, but that need not prevent your learning to read. I can teach you myself; I will, if you like."

"I guess your aunt won't calculate to get me to work for her, and then have me spend my time learning to read. First you know, she'll send me off."

"She will like it perfectly well. Grandmother is in authority here now; I will go and ask her." This I knew would seem to her decisive.

"What did she say?" said Rhoda, rather eagerly, when I returned.

"She says yes, by all means; and that if you learn to read before aunt comes home, you shall have a new dress, and I may choose it for you."

Now it was no sinecure, teaching Rhoda, but she won the dress,—a lilac print, delicate and pretty enough for any one. I undertook to make the dress, but she accomplished a good part of it herself. She said Miss Reeny used to show her about sewing. Whatever was to be done with hands she learned with surprising quickness. Grandmother suggested that the reading lessons should be followed by a course in writing. Before the lameness was well over, Rhoda could write, slowly indeed, yet legibly.

I carried her some roses one evening. While putting them in water, I asked what flowers she liked best.

"I like sweetbriers best," said she. "I think sweetbriers are handsome in the graveyard. I set out one over Jinny Collins's grave. For what I know, it is growing now."

"Who was Jinny Collins, Rhoda?"

"A girl that used to live over at the poor-house when I did. She was bound out to the Widow Whitmarsh, the spring that I went to live with Mrs. Amos Kemp. Jinny used to have sick spells, and Mrs. Whitmarsh wanted to send her back to the poor-house, but folks said she couldn't, because she'd had her bound. She and Mrs. Kemp was neighbors; and after Jinny got so as to need somebody with her nights, Mrs. Kemp used to let me go and sleep with her, and then she could wake me up if she wanted anything. I wanted to go, and Jinny wanted to have me come; she used to say it did her lots of good. Sometimes we'd pretend we was rich, and was in a great big room with curtains to the windows. We didn't have any candle burning,—Mrs. Whitmarsh said there wa'n't no need of one, and more there wa'n't. One night we said we'd take a ride to-morrow or next day. We pretended we'd got a father, and he was real rich, and had got a horse and wagon. Jinny said we'd go to the store and buy us a new white gown,—she always wanted a white gown. By and by she said she was real sleepy; she didn't have no bad coughing-spell that night, such as she most always did. She asked me if I didn't smell the clover-blows, how sweet they was; and then she talked about white lilies, and how she liked 'em most of anything, without it was sweetbriers. Then she asked me if I knew what palms was; and she said when she was dead she wanted me to have her little pink chany box that Miss Maria Elliot give her once, when she bought some blueberries of her. So then she dozed a little while; and I don't know why, but I couldn't get asleep for a good while, for all I'd worked real hard that day. I guess 'twas as much as an hour she laid kind of still; she never did sleep real