composition class, once!")—"she come up to the table an' saw that, an' seemed to feel quite taken aback to find she'd lost her chance at it. Letishy showed her some elegint shell-vases with artificial roses; but that wouldn't do. I told Letishy," continued Miss Mehitable, "that she'd ought to ha' been smart an' taken down the lady's name; an' then I could ha' got Kathryne to paint her another. But you mu't do it now, Kathryne, an' put it up in the bookseller's winder; an' then, if she's anybody that belongs hereabouts, she'll be likely to snap at it, an' the money can go right into the orphans' fund all the same."
"Much obliged," thought I, "for the hint as to the bookseller's shop-window; but I rather think that, if the money comes, the orphan's fund that it ought to 'go right into' this time is Fanny's."
For my orphan's fund from my months of school-keeping, not ample when I first came back, was smaller now. Fanny's illness was necessarily, in some respects, an expensive one. I believed, indeed, and do believe, that it was a gratification to Dr. Physick to lavish upon her, to the utmost of his ability, everything that could do her good, as freely as if she had been his own child or sister. But it could not be agreeable to her, while we had a brother, to be a burden to a man unconnected with us by blood, young in his profession, though rising, and still probably earning not very much more than his wife's and his own daily bread from day to day, and owing us nothing but a debt of gratitude for another's kindnesses, which another man in his place would probably have said that "he paid as he went."
In plain English, the tie between us arose simply from the fact that he boarded with my mother, when he was a poor and unformed medical student. He always said that she was the best friend he had in his solitary youth, and that no one could tell how different all his after-life might have been but for her. She was naturally generous; yet she was a just woman; and I know that, while we were unprovided for, she could not have given, as the world appraises giving, much to him. Still "she did what she could." He paid her his board; but she gave him a home. After she found that his lodgings were unwarmed, she invited him to share her fireside of a winter evening; and, though she would not deprive us of our chat with one another and with her, she taught us to speak in low tones, and never to him, when we saw him at his studies. When they were over, and he was tired and in want of some amusement, she afforded him one at once cheap, innocent, and inexhaustible, and sang to him as she still toiled on at her unresting needle, night after night, ballad after ballad, in her wild, sweet, rich voice. He was very fond of music, though, as he said, he "could only whistle for it." It was the custom then among our neighbors to keep Saturday evening strictly as a part of "the Sabbath." It was her half-holiday, however, for works of charity and mercy; and she would often bid him bring her any failing articles of his scanty wardrobe then, and say that she would mend them for him if he would read to her. Her taste was naturally fine, and trained by regular and well-chosen Sunday reading; and she had the tact to select for these occasions books that won the mind of the intellectual though uncultivated youth by their eloquence, until they won his heart by their holiness. Moreover, she had been gently bred, and could give good advice, in manners as well as morals, when it was asked for, and withhold it when it was not.
The upshot of it all was, that he loved her like a mother; and now the sentiment was deepened by a shade of filial remorse, which I could never quite dispel, though, as often as he gave me any chance, I tried. The last year of my mother's life was the first of his married life. His father-in-law hired, at the end of the town opposite to ours, a furnished house for him and his wife. My mother called upon
