uccess. Ugh! Come out,
come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!"

She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly.
"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had
reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little
boy--"

"Well, that's _like_ you, Adeline! To bring _that_ up! _No_, indeed!
It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he _isn't_ quite one of the
family. What an idea!"

"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise.

"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl,
with some relenting. "When is it to be?"

"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's
selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts
or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them
you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will
understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly
fib like this seemed no harm to her.

X.

In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the
coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead
child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it
wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me;
that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him
back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said,
and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work
to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live."

The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one
lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's
watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she
can't seem to sense the comfort of it."

"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon
her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more
care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you
talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and
nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up
against death, but I don't want any _comfort_. You want to see Elbridge,
Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep
about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have
to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such t