heart
failed him, and he would have said nothing had she not inadvertently
opened the door herself.

"How did you get here so early, Ralph?" and Aunt Matilda's face was
shadowed with a coming rebuke.

"By early rising," said Ralph. But, seeing the gathering frown on his
aunt's brow, he hastened to tell the story of Shocky as well as he
could. Mrs. White did not give way to any impulse toward sympathy until
she learned that Shocky was safely housed with Miss Nancy Sawyer.

"Yes, Sister Sawyer has no family cares," she said by way of smoothing
her slightly ruffled complacency, "she has no family cares, and she can
do those things. Sometimes I think she lets people impose on her and
keep her away from the means of grace, and I spoke to our new preacher
about it the last time he was here, and asked him to speak to Sister
Sawyer about staying away from the ordinances to wait on everybody, but
he is a queer man, and he only said that he supposed Sister Sawyer
neglected the inferior ordinances that she might attend to higher ones.
But I don't see any sense in a minister of the gospel calling
prayer-meeting a lower ordinance than feeding catnip-tea to Mrs. Brown's
last baby. But hasn't this little boy--Shocking, or what do you call
him?--got any mother?"

"Yes," said Ralph, "and that was just what I was going to say." And he
proceeded to tell how anxious Shocky was to see his half-blind mother,
and actually ventured to wind up his remarks by suggesting that Shocky's
mother be invited to stay over Sunday in Aunt Matilda's house.

"Bless my stars!" said that astounded saint, "fetch a pauper here? What
crazy notions you have got! Fetch her here out of the poor-house? Why,
she wouldn't be fit to sleep in my--" here Aunt Matilda choked. The bare
thought of having a pauper in her billowy beds, whose snowy whiteness
was frightful to any ordinary mortal, the bare thought of the contagion
of the poor-house taking possession of one of her beds, smothered her.
"And then you know sore eyes are very catching."

Ralph boiled a little. "Aunt Matilda, do you think Dorcas was afraid of
sore eyes?"

It was a center shot, and the lawyer-uncle, lawyerlike, enjoyed a good
hit. And he enjoyed a good hit at his wife best of all, for he never
ventured on one himself. But Aunt Matilda felt that a direct reply was
impossible. She was not a lawyer but a woman, and so dodged the question
by making a counter-charge.

"It seems to me, Ralph, that