Rachel than Martha's merriment.

"Even you, Timothy, join in ridiculing your sister!" she exclaimed,
in an "_Et tu, Brute_" tone.

"We don't mean to ridicule you, Rachel," gasped her sister-in-law, "but
we can't help laughing."

"At the prospect of my death!" uttered Rachel, in a tragic tone. "Well,
I'm a poor, forlorn creetur, I know. Even my nearest relations make
sport of me, and when I speak of dying, they shout their joy to my
face."

"Yes," gasped Jack, nearly choking, "that's it exactly. It isn't your
death we're laughing at, but your face."

"My face!" exclaimed the insulted spinster. "One would think I was a
fright by the way you laugh at it."

"So you are!" said Jack, with a fresh burst of laughter.

"To be called a fright to my face!" shrieked Rachel, "by my own nephew!
This is too much. Timothy, I leave your house forever."

The excited maiden seized her hood; which was hanging from a nail, and
was about to leave the house when she was arrested in her progress
toward the door by the cooper, who stifled his laughter sufficiently to
say: "Before you go, Rachel, just look in the glass."

Mechanically his sister did look, and her horrified eyes rested upon a
face streaked with inky spots and lines seaming it in every direction.

In her first confusion Rachel jumped to the conclusion that she had been
suddenly stricken by the plague. Accordingly she began to wring her
hands in an excess of terror, and exclaimed in tones of piercing
anguish:

"It is the fatal plague spot! I am marked for the tomb. The sands of my
life are fast running out."

This convulsed Jack afresh with merriment, so that an observer might,
not without reason, have imagined him to be in imminent danger of
suffocation.

"You'll kill me, Aunt Rachel! I know you will," he gasped.

"You may order my coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral voice;
"I shan't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week
past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have
some one go for the doctor, though I know I'm past help."

"I think," said the cooper, trying to look sober, "you will find the
cold-water treatment efficacious in removing the plague spots, as you
call them."

Rachel turned toward him with a puzzled look. Then, as her eyes rested
for the first time upon the handkerchief she had used, its appearance at
once suggested a clew by which she was enabled to account for her own.

Somewhat ashamed of