looked ready to cry, but she kept the tears back
resolutely.

"I--don't--want to leave you, with this deafness coming on!" she
shouted, her usually soft voice ringing like a bugle across the
tea-table.

"There! there! don't you grow foolish," her mother replied, with
absolute calm.

"Why, I can hear ye as well as ever, when you raise your voice a mite,
like that. I should admire to know why you should stay at home on my
account. I suppose I know my way about the house, if I be losin' my
hearing just a dite. It isn't going to spoil my cooking, that I can
see; and I guess Mr. Lindsay won't make no opposition to your going,
for any difference it'll make to him."

Mr. Lindsay, thus appealed to, stammered, and blushed up to his eyes,
and stammered again; but finally managed to say, with more or less
distinctness, that of course whatever was agreeable to Mrs. and Miss
Mellen was agreeable to him, and that he begged not to be considered
in any way in the formation of their plans.

"That's just what I was thinking!" said his hostess. "A man don't want
no botheration of plans. So that's settled, Rose Ellen."

Rose Ellen knew it was settled. She was a girl of character and
resolution, but she had never resisted her mother's will, nor had any
one else, so far as she knew. She cried a good deal over her packing,
and dropped a tear on her silk waist, the pride of her heart, and was
surprised to find that she did not care. "There's no one there to care
whether I look nice or not!" she said aloud; and then blushed
furiously, and looked around the room, fearfully, to be sure that she
was alone.

Early next morning the crack of a whip was heard, and Calvin Parks's
voice, shouting cheerfully for his passenger. The minister, razor in
hand, peeped between his shutters, and saw Rose Ellen come from the
house, wiping her eyes, and looking back, with anxious eyes. A wave of
feeling swept through him, and he felt, for the moment, that he hated
Mrs. Mellen. He had never hated any one before in his innocent life;
while he was pondering on this new and awful sensation, the pale,
pretty face had sunk back in the depths of the old red-lined stage,
the whip cracked, and Calvin drove away with his prey.

Mrs. Mellen came out on the steps, and looked after the stage. Then,
with a movement singularly swift for so stout a person, she made a few
paces down the walk, and, turning, looked up at the windows of the
houses on either side of her own