starvation, I hope you'll enjoy yourselves, and not mind me. I'm a poor,
dependent creetur, and I feel I'm a burden."

"Now, Rachel, that's all foolishness," said Timothy. "You don't feel
anything of the kind."

"Perhaps others can tell how I feel better than I can myself," answered
his sister, with the air of a martyr. "If it hadn't been for me, I know
you'd have been able to lay up money, and have something to carry you
through the winter. It's hard to be a burden on your relations, and
bring a brother's family to this poverty."

"Don't talk of being a burden, Rachel," said Mrs. Harding. "You've been
a great help to me in many ways. That pair of stockings, now, you're
knitting for Jack--that's a help, for I couldn't have got time for them
myself."

"I don't expect," said Aunt Rachel, in the same sunny manner, "that I
shall be able to do it long. From the pains I have in my hands
sometimes, I expect I'm goin' to lose the use of 'em soon, and be as
useless as old Mrs. Sprague, who for the last ten years of her life had
to sit with her hands folded on her lap. But I wouldn't stay to be a
burden--I'd go to the poorhouse first. But perhaps," with the look of a
martyr, "they wouldn't want me there, because I'd be discouragin' 'em
too much."

Poor Jack, who had so unwittingly raised this storm, winced under the
last words, which he knew were directed at him.

"Then why," asked he, half in extenuation, "why don't you try to look