"Why, it flashed across my mind in a minute," and here Miss Vilda
lowered her voice to a whisper, "that perhaps Martha's baby didn't die,
as they told her."

"But, land o' liberty, s'posin' it didn't! Poor Marthy died herself more
'n twenty years ago."

"I know; but supposing her baby didn't die; and supposing it grew up and
died, and left this little girl to roam round the world afoot and
alone?"

"You're cal'latin' dreadful close, 'pears to me; now, don't go s'posin'
any more things. You're makin' out one of them yellow-covered books,
sech as the summer boarders bring out here to read; always chock full of
doin's that never would come to pass in this or any other Christian
country. You jest lay down and snuff your camphire, an' I'll go out an'
pump that boy drier 'n a sand heap!"


Now, Miss Avilda Cummins was unmarried by every implication of her
being, as Henry James would say: but Samantha Ann Ripley was a spinster
purely by accident. She had seldom been exposed to the witcheries of
children, or she would have known long before this that, so far as she
was personally concerned, they would always prove irresistible. She
marched into the kitchen like a general resolved upon the extinction of
the enemy. She walked out again, half an hour later, with the very teeth
of her resolve drawn, but so painlessly that she had not been aware of
the operation! She marched in a woman of a single purpose; she came out
a double-faced diplomatist, with the seeds of sedition and conspiracy
lurking, all unsuspected, in her heart.