many corsets to fit that it wa' n't
possible,--that I must tell my mother she sent a great deal o' love, and
hoped she'd be better very soon.

"I didn't go arter her no more, and all that day and the next my poor
mother lay, now a-burnin' and now a-freezin', but by and by she got
better, and sot up in bed some, havin' my little chair agin her back;
and so she finished bindin' o' the shoes, and I carried on 'em home, she
a-chargin' me twenty times afore I sot out to take care and not lose the
money I got for bindin' on 'em. 'And don't forget to stop at the store,'
she said, 'and buy me a quarter o' tea, as you come back, Johnny.'

"But, after all, I went home without the tea, or the money either.

"In the fust place, the shoemaker said my mother had disappinted him in
not sendin' the work home when she promised; and when I said she was
sick, he answered that that wa 'n't his look-out; and then he eyed the
work sharply, sayin', at last, that he couldn't pay for them sort o'
stitches, and he wouldn't give out no more bindin' neither, and that I
might go with a hop, skip, and jump, and tell my mother so; and he waved
his hand, with a big boot-last in it, as though, if I didn't hop quick,
he'd be glad to help me for'a'd himself.

"'Never mind, Johnny,' says mother, as I leaned my head on her piller,
a-cryin', and told her what the shoemaker had said, 'it'll all be right
when father comes back.'

"She didn't mind about the tea, she said, water would serve just as
well; and then, arter pickin' at the bed-clothes a leetle, she said she
felt sleepy, and turned her face to the wall.

"All winter long she was sick, and there was heart-breakin' things all
the while comin' to pass; but I'd rather not tell on 'em.

"Spring come round at last,--as come it will, whether them that watch
for its comin' are cryin' or laughin',--and the sun shined in at the
south winder and made a patch o' gold on the floor,--all we had, to be
sure,--when one day comes the news we had been a-lookin' for so
long,--the Dauphin was a-comin' in!

"'And me here in bed!' says my mother; 'that'll never do. How
good-for-nothin' I be!'

"Then she told me to run and fetch her best gown out of the chest, and
she was out o' bed the next minute; and though she looked as pale as the
sheet she managed somehow to dress herself. Then she told me to fetch
her the lookin'-glass where she sot by the bedside; and when she seen
her face the tears came to her eyes, an