He remembered just how his young sister had looked when she was fading to her early tomb, and to-day he had seemed to see her expression in his daughter's face.
Abigail laid her little hand on his arm.

"Don't look so, Eben," she said.

"I don't think she is in a decline; she doesn't cough." "What ails her, Abigail ?" Mrs.Merritt hesitated.

"I don't know that much ails her, Eben," she said, evasively.

"Girls often get run down, then spring up again." "Abigail, you don't think the child is fretting about--that boy again ?" "She hasn't mentioned his name to me for weeks, Eben," replied Abigail, and her statement carried reassurance, since the Squire argued, with innocent masculine prejudice, that what came not to a woman's tongue had no abiding in her mind.
His wife, if she were more subtle, gave no evidence of it.