hat is she for a contortionist? Ask Comstock what she's
got in her! And how to run the show without Gerty, that's what beats
me. Why, folks begin to complain already that we advertise swallerin',
and yet don't swaller. But never you mind, ma'am, you shall have Gerty.
You shall have her," she added, with a gulp, "if I have to sell out! Go
ahead!" And again the apron went over her face.

At this point, Gerty waked up with a little murmur, looked up at Miss
Martha's kind face, and smiled a sweet, childish smile. Half asleep
still, she put out one thin, muscular little hand, and went to sleep as
the old lady took it in hers. A kiss awaked her.

"What has thee been dreaming about, my little girl?" said Miss Martha.

"Angels and things, I guess," said the child, somewhat roused.

"Will thee go home with me and live?" said the lady.

"Yes'm," replied Gerty, and went to sleep again.

Two days later she was well enough to ride to Miss Martha's in a
carriage, escorted by Madam Delia and by Anne, "that dull,
uninteresting child," as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, "so
different from this graceful Adelaide." This romantic name was a rapid
assumption of the soft-hearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was
as thoroughly-fixed as if a dozen baptismal fonts had written it in
water.

Madam Delia was sustained, up to the time of Gerty's going, by a sense
of self-sacrifice. But this emotion, like other strong stimulants, has
its reactions. That remorse for a crime committed in vain, which Dr.
Johnson thought the acutest of human emotions, is hardly more
depressing than to discover that we have got beyond our depth in
virtue, and are in water where we really cannot quite swim,--and this
was the good woman's position. During her whole wandering though
blameless life,--in her girlish days, when she charmed snakes at
Meddibemps, or through her brief time of service as plain Car'line
Prouty at the Biddeford mills, or when she ran away from her
step-mother and took refuge among the Indians at Orono, or later, since
she had joined her fate with that of De Marsan,--she had never been so
severely tried.

"That child was so smart," she said, beneath the evening canvas, to her
sympathetic spouse. "I always expected when we got old we'd kinder
retire on a farm or suthin', and let her and her husband--say Comstock,
if he was young enough--run the business. And even after she showed us
the ring and things, I thought likely she'd ju