he privilege of taking care of her own lover, and not of
other folks's. Besides, for all I knew, Stephen would be dead before
ever I came back, and here I was going away and leaving him! Well, I
didn't feel so very bright; so I read the letter. The Doctor asked me
what ailed John Talbot. I thought, if I told him that Miss Jane Talbot
wrote now so that Lurindy shouldn't come, and that he was sick just as
Stephen was, he wouldn't let me go. So I said I supposed he'd burnt his
mouth, like the man in the South, eating cold pudding and porridge; men
always cried out at a scratch. And he said, "Oh, do they?" and laughed.

After about two hours' driving, there came a scream as if all the
panthers in Coos County were let loose to yell, and directly we stopped
at a little place where a red flag was hung out. I asked the Doctor if
they'd got the small-pox here, too; but before he could answer, the
thunder running along the ground deafened me, and in a minute he had put
me inside the cars and was off.

I was determined I wouldn't appear green before so many folks, though
I'd never seen the cars before; so I took my seat, and paid my fare to
Old Salem, and looked about me. Pretty soon a woman came bustling in
from somewhere, and took the seat beside me. There she fidgeted round so
that I thought I should have flown.

"Miss," says she, at length, "will you close your window? I never travel
with a window open; my health's delicate."

I tried to shut it, but it wouldn't go up or down, till a gentleman put
out his cane and touched it, and down it slid, like Signor Blitz. It did
seem as if everything about the cars went by miracle. I thanked him, but
I found afterward it would have been more polite not to have spoken.
After that woman had done everything she could think of to plague and
annoy the whole neighborhood, she got out at Ipswich, and somebody
met her that looked just like our sheriff; and I shouldn't be a bit
surprised to hear that she'd gone to jail. When she got out, somebody
else got in, and took the same seat.

"Miss," says she, "will you have the goodness to open your window? this
air is stifling."

And she did everything that the other woman didn't do. When she found
I wouldn't talk, she turned to the young gentleman and lady that sat
opposite, and that looked as if there was a great deal too much company
in the cars, and found they wouldn't talk either, and at last she caught
the conductor and made him talk.

AH