run out and
leave me alone. Mercy seems a nice, promising body, and Warren might as
well be happy and settled as not. And 'Lecty's been to Washington and
dined with the President and Mrs. Madison, and I'll venture to say there
was something the President's wife consulted her about. And all the big
captains and generals, and what not! And here's the quality of Boston
running after her and asking her out just as if we had nothing to feed
her on at home. She don't do anything, fursisee, but just look smiling
and talk. But my opinion is that Elizabeth Manning hasn't a very long
journey to the graveyard. I don't see what Mary's been thinking about."

Mrs. King took her niece to Dr. Jackson, one of the best medical
authorities of that day, and he looked the young girl over with his keen
eyes.

"If you want the real truth," said the doctor, "she has had too much
east wind and too much hard work. The children of this generation are
not going to stand what their mothers did. A bad cold or two next winter
will finish her, but with care and no undue exposure she may live
several years. But she will never reach the three score and ten that
every human being has a right to."

Uncle Winthrop sent the carriage around every day to the Leveretts'.
They had given up theirs before Mr. Leverett's death. He and Doris took
their morning horseback rides and scoured the beautiful country places
for miles around, until Doris knew every magnificent tree or unusual
shrub or queer old house and its history. These hours were a great
delight to him.

Elizabeth had often gone down to Salem town, but her time was so brief
and there was so much to do that she "couldn't bother." And she wondered
how Doris knew about the shops in Essex Street and Federal Street and
Miss Rust's pretty millinery show, and Mr. John Innes' delicate French
rolls and braided bread, and Molly Saunders' gingerbread that the school
children devoured, and the old Forrester House with its legends and fine
old pictures and the lovely gardens, the wharves with their idle fleets
that dared not put out to sea for fear of being swallowed up by the
enemy.

Uncle Winthrop had taken her several times when some business had called
him thither. But, truth to tell, she had never cared to repeat her
visit to Mrs. Manning's.

The piano was like a bit of heaven, Elizabeth thought, the first time
she came over to visit Doris.

"Oh," she said, with a long sigh, pressing her hand on her h