e pizen for him as you said, and all I could do he
would die in the wall. It ain't as bad as it has been, and I've got some
stuff here to kill it, though I think it smells worse than the rat
himself," and Betty held her nose as she pointed out to her mistress the
saucer of chloride of lime which, at Mrs. Col. Markham's suggestion, she
had put in the sitting room.

Aside from the rat in the wall, things were mostly as Aunt Barbara could
wish them to be. The vinegar had made beautifully. There was fresh
yeast, brewed the day before, in the jug. The milk-pans were bright and
sweet; the cellar door was fastened; the garden was looking its best;
the silver was all up the scuttle-hole, Betty climbing up and risking
her neck every morning to see if it were safe; the stoop and steps were
scrubbed, the roof was swept, and both the cats, Tabby and Jim, were so
fat that they could scarcely walk as they came up to greet their
mistress. Only two mishaps Betty had to relate. Jim had eaten up the
canary bird, and she had broken the kitchen tongs. She had also failed
to accomplish as much sewing as she had hoped to do, and the pile of
work was not greatly diminished.

"There is so many steps to take when a body is alone, and with you gone
I was more particular," she said, by way of apology, as she confessed to
the rat, and the canary bird, and the kitchen tongs, and the small
amount of sewing she had done.

These were all the points wherein she had been remiss, and Aunt Barbara
was content, and even happy, as she laid aside her Stella shawl and
brown Neapolitan, and out in her pleasant dining room sat down to the
hasty meal which Betty improvised, of bread and butter, Dutch cheese,
baked apples, and huckleberry pie, with a cup of delicious tea, such as
Aunt Barbara did not believe the people of New York had ever tasted.
Most certainly those who were fortunate enough to board at first-class
boarding-houses had not; and as she sipped her favorite beverage with
Tabby on her dress and the criminal Tim in her lap, his head
occasionally peering over the table, she felt comforted and rested, and
thankful for her cozy home, albeit it lay like a heavy weight upon her
that her trouble had been for nothing, and no tidings of Ethie had
been obtained.

She wrote to Richard the next day, of her unsuccessful search, and asked
what they should do next.

"We can do nothing but wait and hope," Richard wrote in reply, but Aunt
Barbara added to it,