at the end of the gallery, and Hester came through.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Trevarthen!"

"'Mornin', my dear."

These two were friends now on the common ground of nursing Aunt Butson,
who had been bedridden almost from the day of her admission to the
almshouse, her gaunt frame twisted with dire rheumatics.

Hester, arriving to take up her duties and finding Mrs. Trevarthen outworn
with nursing, had packed her off to rest and taken her place by the
invalid's bedside. In this service she had been faithful ever since; and
it was no light one, for affliction did not chasten Mrs. Butson's caustic
tongue.

"Is she still sleeping?" Hester glanced at the door.

"Ay, ever since you left. Her pains have wore her out, belike.
A terrible night! Why didn' you call me sooner?"

"You have a letter, I see."

Mrs. Trevarthen nodded, obviously embarrassed. "Keeping it for _her_, I
was," she explained. "She do dearly like to look my letters over.
She gets none of her own, you see."

But Hester was not deceived, having observed (without appearing to detect
it) Mrs. Trevarthen's difficulty with the written instructions on the
medicine bottles.

"But she will not wake for some time, we'll hope; and you haven't even
broken the seal! If you would like me to read it to you--it would save
your eyes; and I am very discreet--really I am."

Mrs. Trevarthen hesitated. "My eyes be bad, sure enough," she said,
weakening. "But you mustn't blame me if you come across a word or two you
don't like."

"I shall remember no more of it than you choose," said Hester, slightly
puzzled.

"My Tom han't ever said a word agen' you, and the odds are he'll say
nothing now. Still, there's the chance, and you can't rightly blame him."

"Tom?" Hester's eyes opened wide.

"I know my own boy's writing, I should hope!" said Mrs. Trevarthen, with
pardonable pride. "And good writing it is. Sally Butson says she never
taught a boy whose hand did her more credit. But what's the matter?
You'm as pale as a sheet almost!"

"I--I didn't know,"--stammered Hester, and checked herself.

"You've been over-tiring yourself, and to-night you'll just go off to bed
early and leave the nursing to me. What didn' you know? That Tom was a
scholar? A handsome scholar he'd have been, but for going to sea early
when his father died. I wonder sometimes if he worries over it and the
chances he missed. But Quebec's the postmark; and that means he's right
and saf