en. She, after
one sharp splutter of wrath at the whole situation, went to work
with the resolution of an old soldier.

"Heat some water, quick," said she to Andrew, "and get me a
wash-tub."

Then she told Fanny to brew a mess of sage tea, and began stripping
off Amabel's clothes.

"Let me alone! Mamma, mamma, mamma!" shrieked the child. She fought
and clawed like a little, wild animal, but the old woman, in whose
arms great strength could still arise for emergencies, and in whose
spirit great strength had never died, got the better of her.

When Amabel's clothing was stripped off, and her little, spare body,
which was brown rather than rosy, although she was a blonde, was
revealed, she was as pitiful to see as a wound. Every nerve and
pulse in that tiny frame, about which there was not an ounce of
superfluous flesh, seemed visible. The terrible sensitiveness of the
child appeared on the surface. She shrank, and wailed in a low,
monotonous tone like a spent animal overtaken by pursuers. But Mrs.
Zelotes put her in the tub of warm water, and held her down, though
Amabel's face, emerging from it, had the expression of a wild thing.

"There, you keep still!" said she, and her voice was tender enough,
though the decision of it could have moved an army.

When Amabel had had her hot bath, and had drunk her sage tea by
compulsory gulps, and been tucked into Ellen's bed, her childhood
reasserted itself. Gradually her body and her bodily needs gained
the ascendancy over the unnatural strain of her mind. She fell
asleep, and lay like one dead. Then Ellen crept down-stairs, though
it was almost midnight, where her father and mother and grandmother
were still talking over the matter. Fanny seemed almost as bad as
her sister. It was evident that there was in the undisciplined Loud
family a dangerous strain if too far pressed. She was lying down on
the lounge, with Andrew holding her hand.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Poor Eva!" she kept repeating.

Then she threw off Andrew's hand, sprang to her feet, and began to
walk the room.

"She'll be as bad as her sister if she keeps on," said Mrs. Zelotes,
quite audibly, but Fanny paid no attention to that.

"What is goin' to be done? Oh, my God, what is goin' to be done?"
she wailed. "There she is locked up with two men watchin' her lest
she do herself a harm, and it's got to cost eighteen dollars a week,
unless she's put in with the State poor, and then nobody knows how
she'll b