ll be bound!"

"No; I could not eat."

"Nor supper?"

"No: I never thought of it."

Mr. Parmalee got up, and was out of the room and hanging over the
baluster in a twinkling.

"Here you, Jane Anne!"

Jane Anne appeared.

"Fetch up supper and look sharp--supper for two. Go 'round the corner
and get us some oysters and a pint of port, and fetch up some baked
potatoes and hot mutton chops--and quick about it."

"Now, then," said Mr. Parmalee, reappearing, "I've dispatched the
slavery for provisions, and you've got to eat when they come. I won't
have people living on one meal a day, and wishing they were in heaven,
when I'm around."

"I will do whatever you think best, Mr. Parmalee," she said, humbly.
"You have been very good to me."

"I know it," said Mr. Parmalee. "I always do the polite thing with
your sex. My mother was a woman. She's down in Maine now, and can
churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie. Oh!
them squash pies of my old lady's require to be eat to be believed in;
and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress.
Here's the forage. Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and dump
'em down and go."

Jane Anne did.

"Now, Mrs. Denover, you sit right up and fall to. Here's oysters, and
here's mutton chops, raging hot, and baked potatoes--delicious to look
at. And here's a glass of port wine, and you've got to drink it
without a whimper. Mind what I told you; you don't budge a step
to-morrow unless you eat a hearty supper to-night."

"You are very good to me," Mrs. Denover repeated. "What would have
become of me but for you?"

She strove to eat and drink to please him and to sustain her feeble
strength, but every morsel seemed to choke her. She pushed away her
plate at last and looked at him imploringly.

"I can not eat another mouthful. Indeed I would if I could. I have no
appetite at all of late."

"That's plain to be seen. Well, if you can't, you can't, of course.
And now, as it's past nine, the best thing you can do is to go to bed
at once."

With the same humility she had evinced throughout, the woman obeyed at
once. Mr. Parmalee, left alone, sat over his oysters and his port,
luxuriating in the thirty sovereigns in the present and the three
hundred pounds in the prospective.

"It's been an uncommon good investment," he reflected, "and knocks the
photograph business into a cocked hat. Then there's Sybilla--she goes
with t