a woman dealt with a
ten-year-old boy who from sunrise to sunset had done every mortal thing
he ought not to have done, and had left undone everything that he had
been told to do; and, as if to carry out the very words of the church
service, neither was there any health in him; for he had an inflamed
throat and a whining, irritable, discontented temper that could be
borne only by a mother, a father being wholly inadequate and apparently
never destined for the purpose.

It was a mild evening late in October, and Louisa sat on the porch with
her pepper-and-salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" tied over her
head. Jack, very sulky and unresigned, was dispatched to bed under the
care of the one servant, who was provided with a cupful of vinegar,
salt, and water, for a gargle. John had more than an hour to wait for a
returning train to Farnham, and although ordinarily he would have
preferred to spend the time in the silent and unreproachful cemetery
rather than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was too tired and
hopeless to do anything but sit on the steps and smoke fitfully in the
semi-darkness.

Louisa was much as usual. She well knew--who better?--her brother's
changed course of life, but neither encouragement nor compliment were in
her line. Why should a man be praised for living a respectable life?
That John had really turned a sort of moral somersault and come up a
different creature, she did not realize in the least, nor the
difficulties surmounted in such a feat; but she did give him credit
secretly for turning about face and behaving far more decently than she
could ever have believed possible. She had no conception of his mental
torture at the time, but if he kept on doing well, she privately
intended to inform Susanna and at least give her a chance of trying him
again, if absence had diminished her sense of injury. One thing that she
did not know was that John was on the eve of losing his partnership.
When Jack had said that his father was not going back to the store the
next week, she thought it meant simply a vacation. Divided hearts,
broken vows, ruined lives--she could bear the sight of these with
considerable philosophy, but a lost income was a very different, a very
tangible thing. She almost lost her breath when her brother knocked the
ashes from his meerschaum and curtly told her of the proposed change in
his business relations.

"I don't know what I shall do yet," he said, "whether I shall