overlet
over my prostrate body. She was still standing beside me, when Aunt
Euphronasia hobbled excitedly into the room, and looking across the
threshold, I discerned a tall, slender figure, shrouded heavily in
black, hovering in the dim hall beyond.

"Hi! hi! honey, hyer's Miss Mitty done come ter see you!" exclaimed Aunt
Euphronasia, in a burst of ecstasy.

Sally turned with a cry, and the next instant she was clasped in Miss
Mitty's arms, with her head hidden in the rustling crape on the old
lady's shoulder.

"I've just heard that you were in trouble, and that your husband was
ill," said Miss Mitty, when she had seated herself in the chair by the
window; "I came over at once, though I hadn't left the house for a year
except to go out to Hollywood."

"It was so good of you, Aunt Mitty, so good of you," replied Sally,
caressing her hand.

"If I'd only known sooner, I should have come. You are looking very
badly, my child."

"Ben will be well quickly now, and then I can rest."

At this she turned toward me, and enquired in a gentle, reserved way
about my illness, the nature of the fever, and the pain from which I had
suffered.

"I hope you had the proper food, Ben," she said, calling me for the
first time by my name; "I am sorry that I could not supply you with my
chicken jelly. Dr. Theophilus tells me he considers it superior to any
he has ever tried.--even to Mrs. Clay's."

"Comfort Sally, Miss Mitty, and it will do me more good than chicken
jelly."

For a minute she sat looking at me kindly in silence. Then, as little
Benjamin was brought, she took him upon her lap, and remarked that he
was a beautiful baby, and that she already discerned in him the look of
her Uncle Theodoric Fairfax.

"I should like you to come to my house as soon as you are able to move,"
she said presently, as she rose to go, and paused for a minute to bend
over and kiss little Benjamin. "You will be more comfortable there,
though the air is, perhaps, fresher over here."

I thanked her with tears in my eyes, and a resolve in my mind that at
least Sally and the baby should accept the offer.

"There is a basket of old port in the sitting-room; I thought it might
help to strengthen you," were her last words as she passed out, with
Sally clinging to her arm, and the crape veil she still wore for Miss
Matoaca rustling as she moved.

"Po' Miss Mitty has done breck so I 'ouldn't hev knowed her f'om de
daid," observed Aunt Euphronasia