The floor was painted and very clean, but the walls were unfinished, and the brown rafters were festooned with cobwebs.

In the middle of the room, the supper table was standing, but there was nothing homelike in the arrangement of the many colored dishes and broken knives and forks, neither was there any thing tempting to one's appetite in the coarse brown bread and white-looking butter.

Mary was very tired with holding Alice so long, and sinking into a chair near the window, she would have cried; but there was a tightness in her throat, and a pressure about her head and eyes, which kept the tears from flowing.

She had felt so once before.

Twas when she stood at her mother's grave; and now as the room grew dark, and the objects around began to turn in circles, she pressed her hands tightly to her forehead, and said, 'Oh, I hope I shan't faint." "To be sure you won't," said a loud, harsh voice, and instantly large drops of water were thrown in her face, while the same voice continued: "You don't have such spells often, I hope, for Lord knows I don't want any more fitty ones here." "No, ma'am," said Mary, meekly; and looking up, she saw before her a tall, square-backed, masculine-looking woman, who wore a very short dress, and a very high-crowned cap, fastened under her chin with bows of sky-blue ribbon.
Mary knew she was indebted to this personage for the shower bath, for the water was still trickling from her fingers, which were now engaged in picking her teeth with a large pin.