I’d just—”

“Yes; you are,” said Miss North; “but never mind; stay, if you want to.” She tried to smile, but she looked at the duster which she had put down upon Mrs. Cyrus’s entrance.

Gussie wavered as to whether to take offence, but decided not to—at least not until she could make the remark which was buzzing in her small mind. It seemed strange, she said, that Mrs. North should come, not only to Old Chester, but right across the street from Captain Price!

“Why?” said Mary North, briefly.

“Why?” said Mrs. Cyrus, with faint animation. “Gracious! is it possible that you don’t know about your mother and my father-in-law?”

“Your father-in-law?—my mother?”

“Why, you know,” said Mrs. Cyrus, with her light cackle, “your mother was a little romantic when she was young. No doubt she has conquered it by this time. But she tried to elope with my father-in-law.”

“What!”

“Oh, bygones should be bygones,” Mrs. Cyrus said, soothingly; “forgive and forget, you know. I have no doubt she is perfectly—well, perfectly correct, now. If there’s anything I can do to assist you, ma’am, I’ll send my husband over”; and then she lounged away, leaving poor Mary North silent with indignation. But that night at tea Gussie said that she thought strong-minded ladies were very unladylike; “they say she’s strong-minded,” she added, languidly.

“Lady!” said the Captain. “She’s a man-o’-war’s-man in petticoats.”

Gussie giggled.

“She’s as flat as a lath,” the Captain declared; “if it hadn’t been for her face, I wouldn’t have known whether she was coming bow or stern on.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Cyrus, “that that woman has some motive in bringing her mother back here; and right across the street, too!”

“What motive?” said Cyrus, mildly curious.

But Augusta waited for conjugal privacy to explain herself: “Cyrus, I worry so, because I’m sure that woman thinks she can catch your father again. Oh, just listen to that harmonicon down-stairs! It sets my teeth on edge!”

Then Cyrus, the silent, servile first mate, broke out: “Gussie, you’re a fool!”

And Augusta cried all night, and showed herself at the breakfast-table lantern-jawed and sunken-eyed; and her father-in-law judged it wise to sprinkle his cigar ashes behind the stable.

The day that Mrs. North arrived in Old Chester, Mrs. Cyrus commanded the situation; she saw the daughter get out of the stage, and hurry into the house for a chair so that the mother might descend more easily. She also saw a little, white-haired old lady take that opportunity to leap nimbly, and quite unaided, from the swinging step.

“Now, mother!” expostulated Mary North, chair in hand, and breathless, “you might have broken your limb! Here, take my arm.”

Meekly, after her moment of freedom, the little lady put her hand on that gaunt arm, and tripped up the path and into the house, where, alas! Augusta Price lost sight of them. Yet even she, with all her disapproval of strong-minded ladies, must have admired the tenderness of the man-o’-war’s-man. Miss North put her mother into a big chair, and hurried to bring a dish of curds.

“I’m not hungry,” protested Mrs. North.

“Never mind. It will do you good.”

With a sigh the little old lady ate the curds, looking about her with curious eyes. “Why, we’re right across the street from the old Price house!” she said.

“Did you know them, mother?” demanded Miss North.

“Dear me, yes,” said Mrs. North, twinkling; “why, I’d forgotten all about it, but the eldest boy— Now, what was his name? Al—something. Alfred—Albert; no, Alfred. He was a beau of mine.”

“Mother! I don’t think it’s refined to use such a word.”

“Well, he wanted me to elope with him,” Mrs. North said, gayly; “if that isn’t being a beau, I don’t know what is. I haven’t thought of it for years.”

“If you’ve finished your curds you must lie down,” said Miss North.

“Oh, I’ll just look about—”

“No; you are tired. You must lie down.”

“Who is that stout old gentleman going into the Price house?” Mrs. North said, lingering at the window.

“Oh, that’s your Alfred Price,” her daughter answered; and added, that she hoped her mother would be pleased with the house. “We have boarded so long, I think you’ll enjoy a home of your own.”

“Indeed I shall!” cried Mrs. North, her eyes snapping with delight. “Mary, I’ll wash the breakfast dishes, as my mother used to do!”

“Oh no,” Mary North protested; “it would tire you. I mean to take every care from your mind.”

“But,” Mrs. North pleaded, “you have so much to do; and—”

“Never mind about me,” said the daughter, earnestly; “you are my first consideration.”

“I know it, my dear,” said Mrs. North, meekly. And when Old Chester came to make its call, one of the first things she said was that her Mary was such a good daughter. Miss North, her anxious face red with determination, bore out the assertion by constantly interrupting the conversation to bring a footstool, or shut a window, or put a shawl over her mother’s knees. “My mother’s limb troubles her,” she explained to visitors (in point of modesty, Mary North did not leave her mother a leg to stand on); then she added, breathlessly, with her tremulous smile, that she wished they would please not talk too much. “Conversation tires her,” she explained. At which the little, pretty old lady opened and closed her hands, and protested that she was not tired at all. But the callers departed. As the door closed behind them, Mrs. North was ready to cry.

“Now, Mary, really!” she began.

“Mother, I don’t care! I don’t like to say a thing like that, though I’m sure I always try to speak politely. But it’s the truth, and to save you I would tell the truth no matter how painful it was to do so.”

“But I enjoy seeing people, and—”

“It is bad for you to be tired,” Mary said, her thin face quivering still with the effort she had made; “and they sha’n’t tire you while I am here to protect you.” And her protection never flagged. When Captain Price called, she asked him to please converse in a low tone, as noise was bad for her mother. “He had been here a good while before I came in,” she defended herself to Mrs. North, afterwards; “and I’m sure I spoke politely.”

The fact was, the day the Captain came, Miss North was out. Her mother had seen him pounding up the street, and hurrying to the door, called out, gayly, in her little, old, piping voice, “Alfred—Alfred Price!”

The Captain turned and looked at her. There was just one moment’s pause; perhaps he tried to bridge the years, and to believe that it was Letty who spoke to him—Letty, whom he had last seen that wintry night, pale and weeping, in the slender green sheath of a fur-trimmed pelisse. If so, he gave it up; this plump, white-haired, bright-eyed old lady, in a wide-spreading, rustling black silk dress, was not Letty. She was Mrs. North.

The Captain came across the street, waving his newspaper, and saying, “So you’ve cast anchor in the old port, ma’am?”

“My daughter is not at home; do come in,” she said, smiling and