en in the night? I couldn't get
in to help you. Or there might be a fire in our room,--I'm sure I expect
nothing else. We boiled eggs in the Etna the other night, and got too
much alcohol in the saucer; and then, in the midst of the blaze and
excitement, what should Madam Routh do but come knocking at the door!
Of course we had to put it in the closet, and there were all our muslin
dresses,--that weren't hanging on the hooks in Maud's room! I assure you
I felt like the man sitting on the safety-valve, standing with my back
against the door, and my clothes spread out for fear she would see the
flash under the crack. For we'd nothing else but moonlight in the
room.--But now tell me, please, what are all these things? Meal-bags?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Of course I do. Now that I've got over my fright about your strangling
with the asthma--those shears did wheeze so!--my curiosity is all alive
again."

"I've a cousin down in North Carolina teaching the little freedmen."

"And she's to have all these sacks to tie the naughty ones up in? What a
bright idea! And then to whip them with rods as the Giant did his
crockery, I suppose? Or perhaps--they can't be petticoats! Won't she be
warm, though?"

"May be, if you were to take one and sew up the seams, you would be able
to satisfy yourself."

"I? Why, I never _could_ put anything together! I tried once, with a
pair of hospital drawers, and they were like Sam Hyde's dog, that got
cut in two, and clapped together again in a hurry, two legs up and two
legs down. Miss Craydocke, why don't _you_ go down among the freedmen?
You haven't half a sphere up here. Nothing but Hobbs's Location, and the
little Hoskinses."

"I can't organize and execute. Letitia can. It's her gift. I can't do
great things. I can only just carry round my little cup of cold water."

"But it gets so dreadfully joggled in such a place as this! Don't we
girls disturb you, Miss Craydocke? I should think you'd be quieter in
the other wing, or upstairs."

"Young folks are apt to think that old folks ought to go a story higher.
But we're content, and they must put up with us, until the proprietor
orders a move."

"Well, good-by. But if ever you do smell smoke in the night, you'll draw
your bolt the first thing, won't you?"

This evening,--upon which we have offered you your pass, reader,--Miss
Craydocke is sitting with her mosquito bar up, and her candle alight,
finishing some pretty thing that