arefully with the
pea pods.

"For the blacksmith's pig," she said. "We don't keep one and he gives
us a ham every year.... Not that it's not a different matter with you,
of course," she added politely. "There's some, of course, that's
needed by the world, for books and music and the like o' that--I don't
need Hester to tell me so. There's never an evening in winter, when
all's swept and the lamp trimmed and a bowl of apples out, and Ann and
I sit with our bit of sewing, that I don't thank God for the books
Hester reads out to us. One was written by a woman writer that the
doctor sent us here for a long, long time--poor dear, but she was
feeble!

"She worked with the girls at everything they did, that she could, by
doctor's orders, and it put a little peace into her, she told me.
You've a look in the eyes like her--there were thousands read her
books."

The guest rose abruptly.

"I never wrote a book--or did anything," she said briefly, and turned
to the door.

"You don't tell me!" the old mother stammered. "Why, I made sure by
your look--what made ye so mortal tired, then, deary?"

"I must find that out," she said, slowly, her hand on the knob.
"I--must--find--that--out!"

And on the balcony she paced and thought for an hour, but there was no
calmness in her forehead till the afternoon, when alone with Hester's
mother, for the daughters did not return all that day, she worked with
pressed lips at their tasks, picking Ann's evening salad, sprinkling
cool drops over Hester's fresh-dried linen, brought in by armfuls from
the currant-bushes, spreading the supper-table, pressing out the
ivory-moulded cottage cheese and ringing its dish with grape-leaves
gathered from the well-house.

So intent was she at these tasks, that she heard no footsteps along the
grass, and only as she put the fifth chair at the white-spread table
(for the old mother had been mysteriously firm in her certainty that
they should need it) did she turn to look into the keen brown eyes of
the wise physician who had left her weeks ago in the bed above them.
He gave her a long, piercing look. Then,

"I thought so," he said quietly. "We will go back to-morrow, you and
I--I need your bedroom."

Through the open door she caught a quick glimpse of Ann and Hester half
supporting, half carrying up the stairs a woman heavily veiled in black
crepe; Hester did not join them till late in the meal, and went through
the room with a glass of milk