well just hand it to Asa Briggs, the depot-master, when he gits back. Like's not the old gentleman 'll think to call for it as he comes back along. Here's his fan, too, but he won't be likely to want that this winter."

She looked at the large umbrella; there was a great deal of good material in it, but it was considerably out of repair.

"I don't know but I'll stop an' mend it up for him, poor old creatur'," she said slowly, with an apologetic look at me. Then she sat down again, pulled a large rolled-up needlebook from her deep and accessible pocket, and sewed busily for some time with strong stitches.

I sat by and watched her, and was glad to be of use in chasing her large spool of linen thread, which repeatedly rolled away along the platform. Sister Pinkham's affectionate thoughts were evidently following her old friend.

"I've a great mind to walk back with

the umbrilla; he may need it, an' 't ain't a great ways," she said to me, and then looked up quickly, blushing like a girl. I wished she would, for my part, but it did not seem best for a stranger to give advice in such serious business. "I'll tell you what I will do," she told me innocently, a moment afterwards. "I'll take the umbrilla along with me, and leave word with Asa Briggs I've got it. I go right by his house, so you need n't charge your mind nothin' about it."

By the time she had taken off her gold-bowed spectacles and put them carefully away and was ready to make another start, she had learned where I came from and where I was going and what my name was, all this being but poor return for what I had gleaned of the history of herself and Mr. Teaby. I watched Sister Pinkham until she disappeared, umbrella in hand, over the crest of a hill far along the road to the eastward.

Sarah Orne Jewett.

XXVII.

VROUW LYSBETH WICKOFF was, in her own way, as interesting as her cousin, Madam Van Cortlandt, although, being but a farmer's wife, she lacked something of the grand air of her kinswoman. Let it not be thought, however, that the good widow was wanting in presence. Credible tradition represents her as of a strictly imposing personality: her ample figure, aside from the impressiveness which belongs to mere areadisplacement, had a suggestion of seasoned energy; her rounded shoulders, of farde's borne; her big seamed hands, of the plough-handle, which at need she had not shrunk from griping, and of the lesser mattock; while her shrewd, resolute face, with its ingrained weatherworn bloom, was saved from hardness by touches of womanly sympathy and mother-kindliness.

If these various marks of individuality be thought insufficient to justify her high standing as a leader in the little village of Vlacktebos, where she lived, let it be added that Vrouw Wickoff was mistress of a comfortable estate, comprising a snug homestead and a large farm under good cultivation.

That Dame Lysbeth dwelt alone was no fault of her own; for her husband had died in the course of nature, and of her two children, Grietje, her daughter, had married a young minister, whom the Classis had recently called back to Amsterdam, while Marten, her son, had gone to be a sea-captain in command of a goodly bark which his fond mother had built for him with her own dowry increased by years of hoardings.

But the widow did not suffer herself to mope under this desertion of kith and kin. There was in her none of the fibre that gathers moss. She was not of

the sort to let her limbs stiffen, her blood stagnate, and her feelings grow morbid, knitting stockings in the chimney-nook, while there was so much stirring work at hand to be done.

Seldom need the born toiler go in search of a vineyard, and Vrouw Lysbeth found ample scope for her energies in lending a helpful hand to Dominie Varick with his struggling little church, in works of benevolence among her neighbors, and in the care of her own people and estate.

In this last field she had already gained an enviable repute, not only as a prudent huysvrouw, but as a cunning tiller of the soil. There was an air of order, industry, and thrift about the widow's messuage which roiled the gall of divers small-minded fellow-cultivators in the town, who were loath to confess that a woman could outstrip them in good husbandry. Whether it was from prodigality in manuring, judgment in planting, or care in harvesting, there was no gainsaying the result. It was common talk that the Wickoff farm was better managed than during old Marten's life; it was plain enough, too, that its owner was beforehand with the world, and no thanks to anybody but herself.

Notwithstanding this bustling and successful life, Dame Lysbeth did not suf fer her social interests and sympathies to languish. She was a woman and a mother, and it may be safely assumed that many a stifled yearning stirred her ample bosom, unknown by the world, as she sat of an evening by her well-winged hearth.

Deep and genuine was the good woman's joy, therefore, on receiving one day a letter from cousin Gertryd, saying that Steenie, who had been lying for weeks at death's door from a lung fever, brought on by reckless exposure at the

time of the late executions, was now convalescent, that the doctor had ordered him sent to the country and turned out to pasture like a colt, and that thereupon nothing would serve the junker's whim but going to Vlacktebos. Cousin Lysbeth, be it said, lost no time in sending back a cordial answer, and straightway bestirred herself to make ready for the invalid, who had been aforetime a frequent visitor at her house, and who, indeed, after her own little brood, stood highest in her favor.

The widow's dwelling, without and within, had a winning air of homeliness. The house looked not so much like something built as like something which had grown out of the ground. Long, low, and rambling, it had a grotesque resemblance to a big mushroom, with its heavy roof sweeping in a curved line from the ridge-pole almost to the ground, save where, in front, it was poked up, visor-fashion, to give place to the broad front stoop, which, with its comfortable benches and riot-running vines, seemed to woo the dusty wayfarer to rest and coolness. The heavy wooden shutters, pierced with crescent-shaped slits to let in the light, were, day-times, swung back and fastened by long, twisted, S-shaped irons. In the gable abutting upon the highway might be found evidences of the solidity and age of the homestead in the massive stone masonry supporting the base of the chimney, and in the rude iron figures, giving the date of construction, imbedded in the rough-cast of the upper wall. At the corners stood two large casks to catch the rain-water. Over against the back door was a detached kitchen for the slaves, while on a plateau below the level of the house a line of out-buildings, including two roomy barns, surrounded an ample cow-yard, in one corner of which bubbled a never-failing spring.

It was early summer; the bustle of planting was over, the house had been cleaned from cellar to garret, and the

widow was in the best possible trim for company.

The visitor did not wait for a second bidding. He came riding up to the door on a pillion one afternoon, accompanied by one of his father's clerks and his old negro nurse.

Notwithstanding the care taken in his removal, he was a good deal shaken by the undue exertion. The hospitable look of the old house, the motherly figure of cousin Lysbeth in her white cap and homespun petticoat, standing in the doorway, with both her arms extended in widest welcome, brought a smile to his tired eyes, and he suffered himself to be lifted down like a child and led into the cozy parlor, where he could scarcely walk upright without bumping his towering head.

He looked around the room with a convalescent gleam of satisfaction to find nothing displaced from its old-time order: the wide fireplace filled with fresh oak-boughs; the shining andirons; the pale pink hearth-tiles; the two snowy goose-wings standing upright on either hand; the floor Sanded in the familiar waving pattern; the dark old cupboard in the corner on its huge ball-feet; the low, straight-backed chair at the window with its puffy feather cushion, and the silk patchwork bag hanging from the back filled with unfinished knitting; the little table holding the big Amsterdam Bible with its burnished clasps; the two old prints on the wainscoted wall, depicting terrific naval battles won by noted Dutch admirals, which no doubt inspired young Marten with his wild longing for a seafaring life; the sacred guest-bed, in a deep niche at the end of the room, supporting, on its four fluted posts, a tester hung with gay chintz to match the counterpane and the covering of the padded old comfort-chair standing hard by in the corner.

At the first glance of her experienced eye, cousin Lysbeth saw the state her patient was in, and assumed masterful

control of him. Asking no questions, she took off his wraps, settled him in the big chair, peremptorily forbade him to move or to talk, and, beckoning his attendants, went away to the kitchen. Coming back after a little with a glass of wine and a toothsome morsel, and finding the junker too tired to eat, she promptly put him to bed, darkened the room, and left him to sleep. Finding, on a second visit, a half hour afterward, that he was staring awake and in a high fever, she posted off one of her slaves to New Utrecht for Dr. Staats, and in the mean time administered an herb draught of her own brewing.

Although nominally in the next village, the Staats farm was, in point of fact, not far away; for Vrouw Lysbeth herself lived close upon the boundary line. Near or far, the doctor took his time, and chose not to come until the next day, when he found the junker somewhat revived after a good night's sleep.

While studying his patient's symptoms, the doctor talked in a neighborly way with Vrouw Wickoff about the planting of corn, the promise of calves, the fattening of pigs, and the like farmer's gossip. The patient listened with an air of deep content. It was part of the cure, this country talk; he assimilated it as a tonic; its earthy, out-of-door tone accorded so perfectly with notes of crowing cocks, of lowing cattle, with snatches of bird-song and the whole full-throated chorus of field and barn-yard.

In due time the doctor took his leave, promising to send some medicine of his own compounding; vastly better, of course, than cousin Lysbeth's draught, for it had a villainous taste and a Latin name rotundly accented on the antepenult.

Cousin Lysbeth cared not a fig for the Latin or the doctor's wise look, only in the case of Gertryd's child she chose not to take any chances. She failed not, however, to vent sundry sarcasms

on doctors in general when the medicine failed to arrive, and she perforce had recourse again to the despised herb

tea.

Next day, thanks to nature and cousin Lysbeth, the patient was so much improved that he begged to be taken out; and his nurse, being happily a believer in fresh air and sunshine, lost no time in bringing forth the big chair to the most sheltered corner of the stoop, where, having tucked in her charge with the responsible air of one conscious of skill and well content at having an occasion to display it, went away to her dairy.

Entrance to Vrouw Wickoff's dairy was forbidden to all the world save one or two discreet women-servants. Naturally, this spot more than any other in the house was the object of her jealous care, as it was the source of her highest triumph as a huysvrouw. The very approach to it on a summer's day was refreshing, with its cool air, its delicious fragrance of fresh butter and new curds. Once past the threshold, the widow gave herself up with professional gravity to its cares and duties: skimming the thick yellow cream with her own hands; peeping with jealous eye, from time to time, into the deep churn which a stout negress pumped up and down; adjusting the press upon the green cheeses; scanning with sharp eye the stone-flagged floor, the whitewashed walls, the wellscrubbed shelves, lest haply a stray insect or floating speck of dirt smirch the awful purity of the odorous cell.

Meantime, Steenie, left to himself upon the stoop, watched the white clouds sail up the sky, watched the waving tree-tops, or followed the humming-birds among the flower-beds; listening the while to the chit-chat of the robins in the orchard, the tinkling warble of the bobolink in the distant meadow, the crickets in the blooming clover, and through all and over all the soughing accompaniment of the summer breeze.

Soothed by these combined influences,

the junker was fast nodding off to sleep, when he was aroused by the sharp clatter of a horse's feet close by in the highway. The noise stopped at his kinswoman's gate.

Then followed a murmur of voices and a burst of laughter, and the next minute, with romping step, a girl came dashing around the corner, cleared with a bound the three broad stone doorsteps, and was about to lay hold of the knocker, when she saw him and drew back.

"Catalina!"

The smile faded from her lips; she caught anew her spent breath, and with swift hand adjusted her disordered dress.

"I thought you were in bed," she said, and looked away with an air of embarrassment.

"I am sorry not to be sick enough to suit you."

Casting a look askance at his wasted figure, she reddened at the reproach. "I am come my father sent me to bring you some medicine."

"So! You are very good. Stay! draw up yonder bench. Medicine! Sit you down now, and tell me about it."

It was still the same old tone of goodhumored condescension, as to a child. The little frown and slight drawing up of her figure, by which she mutely protested against this persistent insinuation of infancy, were lost upon the languid junker.

"Vrouw Wickoff is within?" she asked, ignoring the invitation.

"Yes," he answered, with a look of amusement at the little snub, "but she likes not to be interrupted at her buttermaking. See, here is a bench."

"I-my sister is waiting at the gate, on a pillion."

"Go fetch her in straightway. Cousin Lysbeth will be glad to have you at dinner. You may tie the horse."

"Thank you much, but we have to go to the dominie's. I cannot stay," moving away, then stopping and hesitating. "Here is the medicine."

She looked a little exasperated.
"The flies are biting me."

"If I knew where a fan was to be had!"

He waved his hand toward the parlor. She hastened away, and came back directly with a partridge-tail, spread, and finished at the node with a bit of ribbon.

What with her impatience and his nerveless grasp, the fan fell between them; whereupon, reaching forward to pick it up, he lost his balance and toppled forward in a heap to the floor. With a look of alarm and sympathy she sprang to help him, which she could do only by actually lifting him in her arms. Hardly was he seated in the chair, however, when, with a deep blush, she cleared herself from this involuntary embrace, darted into the house, found the pantry, handed the medicine to the astonished