red moodily before him, and made no reply.

"I am a meddlesome old woman!" said Mrs. Tree. "You wish I would leave
you alone, James Stedman, and so I will. Old women ought to be
strangled; there's some place where they do it, Cap'n Tree told me about
it once; I suppose it's because they talk too much. She said she
shouldn't be alone while I lived, hey? Where are you going, James? Stay
and have supper with me; do! it would be a charity; and there's a larded
partridge with bread sauce. Direxia's bread sauce is the best in the
world, you know that."

"Yes, I know!" said Doctor Stedman, his eyes twinkling once more as he
took up his hat. "I wish I could stay, but I have still one or two calls
to make. But--larded partridge, Mrs. Tree, in your condition! I am
surprised at you. I would recommend a cup of gruel and a slice of thin
toast without butter."

"Cat's foot!" said Mrs. Tree. "Well, good-night, James; and don't forget
the orders to Direxia: I am utterly unfit to talk and must not see any
one."

CHAPTER XVII.

NOT YET!

How it happened that, in spite of the strict interdict laid upon all
visitors at Mrs. Tree's house, Tommy Candy found his way in, nobody
knows to this day. Direxia Hawkes found him in the front entry one
afternoon, and pounced upon him with fury. The boy showed every sign of
guilt and terror, but refused to say why he had come or what he wanted.
As he was hustled out of the door a voice from above was heard to cry,
"The ivory elephant for your own, mind, and a box of the kind with nuts
in it!" Sometimes Jocko could imitate his mistress's voice to
perfection.

Mrs. Weight, whom the news of Mrs. Tree's actual illness had wrought to
a fever-pitch of observation, saw the boy come out, and carried the word
at once to Mrs. Pryor; in ten minutes that lady was at the door
clamoring for entrance. Direxia, her apron at her eyes, was firm, but
evidently in distress.

"She's took to her bed!" she said. "I darsn't let you in; it'd be as
much as my life is wuth and her'n too, the state she's in. I think she's
out of her head, Mis' Pryor. There! she's singin' this minute; do hear
her! Oh, my poor lady! I wish Doctor Stedman would come!"

Over the stairs came floating, in a high-pitched thread of voice, a
scrap of eldritch song:

"Tiddy hi, toddy ho,
Tiddy hi hum,
Thus was it when Barbara Popkins was young!"

Mrs. Pryor hastened back and told Miss Vesta that their