Bowler blood's comin' out, that's all; and the only wonder is
it hasn't come out before."

All that day, and the next, the minister did not seem like himself. He
was no more absent-minded than usual, perhaps,--that could hardly be.
But he was grave and troubled, and the usual happy laugh did not come
when Rose Ellen checked him gently as he was about to put pepper into
his tea. Several times he seemed about to speak: his eye dwelt
anxiously on the cream-jug, in which he seemed to be seeking
inspiration; but each time his heart failed him, and he relapsed with
a sigh into his melancholy reverie.

Rose Ellen was silent, too, and the burden of the talk fell on her
mother. At supper on the second day, midway between the ham and the
griddle-cakes, Mrs. Mellen announced:

"Rose Ellen, I expect you'd better go down to Tupham to-morrow, and
stay a spell with your grandm'ther. She seems to be right poorly, and
I expect it'd be a comfort to her to have you with her. I guess you'd
better get ready to-night, and Calvin Parks can take you up as he goes
along."

Rose Ellen and the minister both looked up with a start, and both
flushed, and both opened wide eyes of astonishment.

"Why, mother!" said the girl. "I can't go away and leave you now, with
this cold on you."

Her mother did not hear her, so Rose Ellen repeated the words in a
clear, high-pitched voice, with a note of anxiety which brought a
momentary shade to Mrs. Mellen's smooth brow. The next moment,
however, the brow cleared again.

"I guess you'd better go!" she said again. "It'd be a pity if Mr.
Lindsay and I couldn't get along for a month or six weeks; and I wrote
mother yesterday that you would be up along to-morrow, so she'll be
looking for you. I don't like to have mother disappointed of a thing
at her age, it gives her the palpitations."

"You--wrote--that I was coming!" repeated Rose Ellen. "And you never
told me you was writing, mother? I--I should have liked to have known
before you wrote."

"Coat?" said Mrs. Mellen. "Oh, your coat'll do well enough, Rose
Ellen. Why, you've only just had it bound new, and new buttons put on.
I should take my figured muslin, if I was you, and have Miss Turner
look at it and see how you could do it over: she has good ideas,
sometimes, and it'd be a little different from what the girls here was
doin', maybe. Anyway, I'd take it, and your light sack, too. 'Twon't
do no harm to have 'em gone over a little."

Rose Ellen