ook upon a sight like this without feeling the void in her
own heart where a mother's affection should have nestled. Cynthia sat
perfectly still, without rocking, and watched kind Mrs. Hopkins at her
quasi parental task. A tear stole down her rigid face as she saw the
rounded limbs of the children bared in their white beauty, and their
little heads laid on the pillow. They were sleeping quietly when Mrs.
Hopkins left the room for a moment on some errand of her own. Cynthia
rose softly from her chair, stole swiftly to the bedside, and printed a
long, burning kiss on each of their foreheads.

When Mrs. Hopkins came back, she found the maiden lady sitting in her
place just as she left her, but rocking in her chair and sobbing as one
in sudden pangs of grief.

"It is a great trouble, Miss Cynthy," she said,--"a great trouble to
have such a child as Myrtle to think of and to care for. If she was
like our Susan Posey, now!--but we must do the best we can; and if Mr.
Gridley once sets himself to it, you may depend upon it he 'll make it
all come right. I wouldn't take on about it if I was you. You let me
speak to our Mr. Gridley. We all have our troubles. It is n't everybody
that can ride to heaven in a C-spring shay, as my poor husband used to
say; and life 's a road that 's got a good many thank-you-ma'ams to go
bumpin' over, says he."

Miss Badlam acquiesced in the philosophical reflections of the late Mr.
Ammi Hopkins, and left it to his widow to carry out her own suggestion
in reference to consulting Master Gridley. The good woman took the first
opportunity she had to introduce the matter, a little diffusely, as is
often the way of widows who keep boarders.

"There's something going on I don't like, Mr. Gridley. They tell me that
Minister Stoker is following round after Myrtle Hazard, talking religion
at her jest about the same way he'd have liked to with our Susan, I
calculate. If he wants to talk religion to me or Silence Withers,--well,
no, I don't feel sure about Silence,--she ain't as young as she used
to be, but then ag'in she ain't so fur gone as some, and she's got
money,--but if he wants to talk religion with me, he may come and
welcome. But as for Myrtle Hazard, she's been sick, and it's left her
a little flighty by what they say, and to have a minister round her all
the time ravin' about the next world as if he had a latch-key to the
front door of it, is no way to make her come to herself again. I 've
seen