He straightened the quilt over his mother's meagre shoulders.

"I'm goin' to start the fire," said he, "and put on the hasty-pudding, and when it's all ready I'll call Elmira, and we'll help you up." "What's goin' to be done ?" his mother quavered again; but this time feebly, as if her fierce struggles were almost hushed by contact with authority.
"I've got a plan," said Jerome.

"You just lay still, mother, and I'll see what's best." Ann Edwards's eyes rolled after the boy as he went out of the room, but she lay still, obediently, and said not another word.

An unreasoning confidence in this child seized upon her.

She leaned strongly upon what, until now, she had held the veriest reed--to her own stupefaction and with doubtful content, but no resistance.