ilver with the utmost prejudice and
vehemence, and freeing her mind on any point, to the delight of the
natives. Occasionally, when borne along by the joy of argument, she
forgets to change at the point of junction, and has to be found and
dragged out of the railway carriage; occasionally, too, she is left
behind when taking a cheerful cup of tea at a way station, but this is
comparatively seldom. Her stories of life belowstairs in the various
inns and hotels, her altercations with housemaid or boots or landlady in
our behalf, all add a zest to the day's doings.

Benella's father was an itinerant preacher, her mother the daughter of
a Vermont farmer; and although she was left an orphan at ten years,
educating and supporting herself as best she could after that, she is as
truly a combination of both parents as her name is a union of their two
names.

"I'm so 'fraid I shan't run across any of grandmother's folks over
here, after all," she said yesterday, "though I ask every nice-appearin'
person I meet anywheres if he or she's any kin to Mary Boyce of Trim;
and then, again, I'm scared to death for fear I shall find I'm own
cousin to one of these here critters that ain't brushed their hair nor
washed their apurns for a month o' Sundays! I declare, it keeps me real
nerved up... I think it's partly the climate that makes 'em so slack,"
she philosophised, pinning a new bag on her knee, and preparing to
backstitch the seam. "There's nothin' like a Massachusetts winter for
puttin' the git-up-an'-git into you. Land! you've got to move round
smart, or you'd freeze in your tracks. These warm, moist places always
makes folks lazy; and when they're hot enough, if you take notice,
it makes heathen of 'em. It always seems so queer to me that real hot
weather and the Christian religion don't seem to git along together.
P'r'aps it's just as well that the idol-worshippers should get used to
heat in this world, for they'll have it consid'able hot in the next one,
I guess! And see here, Mrs. Beresford, will you get me ten cents'--I
mean sixpence--worth o' red gingham to make Miss Monroe a bag for Mr.
Macdonald's letters? They go sprawlin' all over her trunk; and there's
so many of 'em I wish to the land she'd send 'em to the bank while she's
travellin'!"

Chapter XX. We evict a tenant.

'Soon as you lift the latch, little ones are meeting you,
Soon as you're 'neath the thatch, kindly looks are
greeting you;