lters returned from town, having
left every window closed and every door locked, as is her custom. She
threw open her door and started in, but paused, being greeted by a
snow-storm of goose feathers that filled the air and now drifted
outward.

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" she exclaimed, peering in, blank
with bewilderment. Then her eyes caught sight of what had once been
her bed. Sitting up in it was the raccoon, his long black jaws bearded
with down, his head and ears stuck about with feathers, and his eyes
blazing green with defiance.

She slammed and locked the door.

"Run for the sheriff!" she cried, in terror, to the boy who had brought
her market basket; and she followed him as he fled.

"What is it, Mrs. Walters?" asked the sheriff, sternly, meeting her and
bringing the handcuffs.

"There's somebody in my bed!" she cried, wringing her hands. "I
believe it's the devil."

"It's my 'coon," said the carpenter, laughing; for by this time we were
all gathered together.

"What a dear 'coon!" said the sewing-girl.

"Oh, Mrs. Walters! You are like Little Red Riding-hood!" said Sylvia.

"I can't arrest a 'coon, madam!" exclaimed the sheriff, red in the neck
at being made ridiculous.

"Then arrest the carpenter!" cried poor, unhappy, excited Mrs. Walters,
bursting into tears and hiding her face on Georgiana's shoulder.

And among us all Georgiana was the only comforter. She laid aside her
own work for that day, spent the rest of it as Samaritan to her
desperately wounded neighbor, and at nightfall, over the bed, now
peaceful and snowy once more, she spread a marvellous priceless quilt
that she had long been making to exhibit at the approaching World's
Fair in New York.

"Georgiana," I said, as I walked home with her at bedtime, "it seems to
me that things happen in order to show you off."

"Only think!" Georgiana replied; "she will never get into bed again
without a shiver and a glance at the chimney. I begrudge her the quilt
for one reason: it has a piece of one of your old satin waistcoats in
it."

"Did she tell you that she had had those bedclothes ever since her
marriage?"

"Yes; but I have always felt that she couldn't have been married very
long."

"How long should you think?"

"Oh, well--about a minute."

"And yet she certainly has the clearest possible idea of Mr. Walters.
I imagine that very few women ever come to know their husbands as
perfectly as Mrs. Walters knew hers."