anted to fetch her
here, where Aunt Betsy could nuss her up, and then I can kinder tend to
her myself, you know."

This last remark called forth no answering joke, for Jerry's companions
all knew his kindly nature, and it was no wonder to them that his
sympathies were so strongly enlisted for the fair girl thus thrown upon
his protection. It was a big, noble heart over which Jerry Langley
buttoned his driver's coat, and when the physician who had arrived
pronounced the lady too ill to proceed any further, he called aside the
fidgety landlord, whose peculiarities he well knew, and bade him "not
to fret and stew, for if the gal hadn't money, Jerry Langley was good
for a longer time than she would live, poor critter;" and he wiped a
tear away, glancing, the while, at the burying-ground which lay just
across the garden, and thinking how if she died, her grave should be
beneath the wide-spreading oak, where often in the summer nights he
sat, counting the head-stones which marked the last resting place of
the slumbering host, and wondering if death were, as some had said, a
long, eternal sleep.

Aunt Betsey, of whom he had spoken, was the landlady, a little dumpy,
pleasant-faced, active woman, equally in her element bending over the
steaming gridiron, or smoothing the pillows of the sick-bed, where her
powers of nursing had won golden laurels from Others than Jerry
Langley. When the news was brought to the kitchen that among the
passengers was a sick girl, who was to be left, her first thought,
natural to everybody, was, "What shall I do ?" while the second,
natural to her, was, "Take care of her, of course."

Accordingly, when the dinner was upon the table, she laid aside her
broad check apron, substituting in its place a half-worn silk, for
Jerry had reported the invalid to be "every inch a lady;" then
smoothing her soft, silvery hair with her fat, rosy hands, she repaired
to the sitting-room, where she found the driver watching his charge,
from whom he kept the buzzing flies by means of his bandana, which he
waved to and fro with untiring patience.

"Handsome as a London doll," was her first exclamation, adding, "but I
should think she'd be awful hot with them curls, dangling' in her neck!
If she's goin' to be sick they'd better be cut off!"

If there was any one thing for which Aunt Betsey Aldergrass possessed a
particular passion, it was for _hair-cutting_, she being barber general
for Laurel Hill, which numbered