ll's an awful trial to mother."

Jerry took up his axe in one hand, and began absently chopping off a
circle of bark about the tree. Stella was near saying, "Don't you cut
your foot!" but she closed her lips upon the friendly caution and
continued:--

"There's nothin' she don't get her nose into, and it just wears mother
out."

"She's a great talker, seems if I remembered," said Jerry absently,
wishing Stella would keep her hands under the shawl and not get them
frozen to death. He was about to add that most women did talk too much,
but somehow that seemed an unfortunate implication from one as unpopular
as he, and he caught himself up in time. Stella was dashing on now, in
the course of her obnoxious task.

"If anything's queer, she just goes at mother hard as she can pelt and
keeps at her till she finds it out. And mother hates it enough when
she's well, but when she's sick it's just awful. And now she's flat on
her back."

"Course," said Jerry, in a comprehending sympathy. "Want I should carry
your aunt Hill off to the Junction?"

"Why, you can't! She wouldn't go. You couldn't pry her out with a
crowbar. She's made up her mind to stay till a week from to-morrow, and
till a week from to-morrow she'll stay."

Jerry looked gloomily into the distance. He was feeling his own
limitations as a seer.

"Well," he said, venturing a remark likely to involve him in no way, "I
s'pose she will."

"Now, see here," said Stella. She spoke with a defiant hardness, the
measure of her hatred for what she had to do. "There's one way you could
help us out. She asked about you right away, and of course she thought
we were--goin' together, same 's we had been."

Here her voice failed her, and he knew the swift color on her cheek was
the miserable sign of her shame in such remembrance. It became his task
to hearten her.

"Course," said he. "Anybody would."

"Well, I can't tell her. I ain't even told mother yet, and I don't want
to till she's on her feet again. And if aunt Hill gets the leastest wind
of it she'll hound mother every minute, and mother'll give up,
and--well, I just can't do it, that's all."

Jerry was advancing eagerly now, his lips parted for speech; but her
task once begun was easier, and she continued:--

"Now, don't you see? I should think you could."

"Yes," said Jerry, in great hopefulness. "Course I do."

"No, you don't either. It's only, she's goin' to be here not quite a
week, and it's only one Sa