' got to drink this here cup o' hot tea I ha' brought ye;
and let me help ye upstairs to yer bed as quick as may be."

"When I ha' baked Depper's fourses cake, and sent it off by 'Meelyer's
little gal--she ha' lent her to me to go back and forth to the
harvest-field, 'Meelyer have--I kin go," the wife said; "not afore,"
hiccoughing loudly over the tea she tried to drink; "not afore--not
afore! Oh, how I wish I could, bor; how I wish I could!"

"You're a-goin', this instant minute," the masterful Dinah declared.

The other had not the strength to resist. "I'm wholly done," she
murmured, helplessly, "wholly done at last."

"My! How ha' you got up these here stairs alone?" Dinah, having
half-dragged, half-carried the feeble creature to the top, demanded of
her, wiping her own brow.

"Crawled, all-fours." Depper's wife panted out the explanation. "And to
git down 'em i' the mornin's--oh, the Lord alone knows how I ha' got
down 'em i' th' mornin's. Thankful I'd be to know I'd never ha' to come
down 'em agin."

"You never will," said Mrs Brome.

"I don't want to trouble you, no fudder. I can fend for myself now,"
the poor woman said, when at length she lay at peace between the
sheets; her face bathed, and the limp grimy fingers; the scant dry hair
smoothed decently down the fallen temples. "I'd rather it'd ha' been
another woman that had done me the sarvice, but I ain't above bein'
thankful to you, for all that. All I'll ask of ye now, Dinah Brome, is
that ye'll have an eye to Depper's fourses cake in th' oven, and see
that 'Meelyer's gal take it and his home-brew, comf'table, to th' field
for 'm."

Dinah, having folded the woman's clothes, spread them for additional
warmth upon the poor bed-covering. "Don't you worrit no more about
Depper," she said, "Strike me, you're the one that want seem' to now,
Car'line."

The slow tears oozed beneath Car'line's closed lids. "I kin fend for
myself if Depper ain't put about," she said.

When Depper returned, with the shades of night, from the harvest-field,
he might hardly have known his own living-room. The dirty rags of
carpet had disappeared, the bricks were scrubbed, the dangerous-looking
heap of clothing had been removed from the sofa, and a support added to
its broken leg; the fireside chairs, the big chest of drawers, redolent
of the turpentine with which they had been rubbed, shone in the
candlelight; the kettle sang on the bars by the side of a saucepan of
potatoes