a day somewheres in the
neighborhood just to get along with." Mrs. Bickford flushed with
displeasure, and turned to look at her visitor. "Now what do you think
of such a man as that, Miss Pendexter?" she asked.

"Why, I don't know but 't was just as good for an invention," answered
Miss Pendexter timidly; but her friend looked doubtful, and did not
appear to understand.

"Then I asked him where it was, one day that spring when I'd got tired
to death churnin', an' the butter wouldn't come in a churn I'd had to
borrow, and he'd gone an' took ours all to pieces to get the works to
make some other useless contrivance with. He had no sort of a business
turn, but he was well meanin', Mr. Wallis was, an' full o' divertin'
talk; they used to call him very good company. I see now that he never
had no proper chance. I've always regretted Mr. Wallis," said she who
was now the widow Bickford.

"I'm sure you always speak well of him," said Miss Pendexter. "'T was
a pity he hadn't got among good business men, who could push his
inventions an' do all the business part."

"I was left very poor an' needy for them next few years," said
Mrs. Bickford mournfully; "but he never'd give up but what he should
die worth his fifty thousand dollars. I don't see now how I ever did
get along them next few years without him; but there, I always managed
to keep a pig, an' sister Eliza gave me my potatoes, and I made out
somehow. I could dig me a few greens, you know, in spring, and then 't
would come strawberry-time, and other berries a-followin' on. I was
always decent to go to meetin' till within the last six months, an'
then I went in bad weather, when folks wouldn't notice; but 't was a
rainy summer, an' I managed to get considerable preachin' after all.
My clothes looked proper enough when 't was a wet Sabbath. I often
think o' them pinched days now, when I'm left so comfortable by
Mr. Bickford."

"Yes 'm, you've everything to be thankful for," said Miss Pendexter,
who was as poor herself at that moment as her friend had ever been,
and who could never dream of venturing upon the support and
companionship of a pig. "Mr. Bickford was a very personable man," she
hastened to say, the confidences were so intimate and interesting.

"Oh, very," replied Mrs. Bickford; "there was something about him that
was very marked. Strangers would always ask who he was as he come into
meetin'. His words counted; he never spoke except he had to. 'T was a
re