s. Ploughman; "very weak, out of her mind part of the
time with the fever."

"Do you calculate she'll die, Mrs. Ploughman?"

"I don't know. But I don't calculate she'll live, Mrs. Tomkins.
Still, we must hope for the best. This is the way it was; first the
influenza, and then the pneumony. Double pneumony, the doctor says.
There's a lot of it around again, like last year. It takes the young
and the hardy. It won't get me. No.

"There's nothing to do for it," she added, "nothing, that is, beyond
nursing."

"If it wasn't for Mrs. Wicket," said Mrs. Tomkins, "I expect she'd have
been dead before this. Mrs. Wicket's a capable woman in things like
that. Capabler than Miss Beal. There was no one else ever made me so
comfortable. I have to say that about her; Mrs. Grumble's getting the
best of care. And I'm looking after Juliet. Not that she's any
trouble; she's as quiet as a mouse, playing all day long with her
dolls."

But Mrs. Ploughman could not find it in her heart to forgive Mrs.
Wicket for having been the cause of her grandson Noel's death. "Yes,"
she said, "I expect Mrs. Grumble's getting good care. But when a
body's dying, 'tisn't so much care you want, as salvation. I wouldn't
want any Jezebel hanging over my deathbed, Mrs. Tomkins, thank you."

Mrs. Tomkins, who attended each Sunday the little Baptist church at
Adams' Forge, did not believe that she and Mrs. Ploughman would meet in
heaven. However, she did not choose this moment to mention it. "It
may be as you say, Mrs. Ploughman," she remarked, "or it may be that
we've been too hard oh Mrs. Wicket. Mind you, I don't speak for her
life with that bad egg of Eben Wicket's. But we ought to forgive
others as we would have others forgive us."

"You needn't quote Gospels to me," declared Mrs. Ploughman; "I'm as
easy to forgive as the next one, where there's a reason for it. I
don't hold it against Mrs. Wicket that she drove my Noel to his death.
No. I forgive her for it. And I don't blame Mr. Jeminy for going off,
if he had a mind to, and leaving Mrs. Grumble to catch the pneumony."

"No," said Mrs. Tomkins.

"But there's this much queer," said Mrs. Ploughman: "The way she takes
on in the fever. She does nothing but call him back, Mrs. Tomkins.
'Mr. Jeminy,' she hollers, 'where's the old rascal?' she says. Then
she goes on about his being in some trouble, and she has to get him out
of it. 'He's in the toils,' she says; 'he's with the s