fan, and Mrs. Lander gratefully cooled her hot wet face. The children had
found the noises of her affliction and the turbid tones of her monologue
annoying, and had gone off to play in the woods; Claxon kept incuriously
about the work that Clementina had left him to; his wife maintained the
confidence which she always felt in Clementina's ability to treat with
the world when it presented itself, and though she was curious enough,
she did not offer to interrupt the girl's interview with Mrs. Lander;
Clementina would know how to behave.

Mrs. Lander, when she had refreshed herself with the fan, seemed to get a
fresh grip of her theme, and she told Clementina all abort Mr. Lander's
last sickness. It had been so short that it gave her no time to try the
climate of Colorado upon him, which she now felt sure would have brought
him right up; and she had remembered, when too late, to give him a
liver-medicine of her own, though it did not appear that it was his liver
which was affected; that was the strange part of it. But, brief as his
sickness was, he had felt that it was to be his last, and had solemnly
talked over her future with her, which he seemed to think would be
lonely. He had not named Clementina, but Mrs. Lander had known well
enough what he meant; and now she wished to ask her, and her father and
mother, how they would all like Clementina to come and spend the winter
with her at Boston first, and then further South, and wherever she should
happen to go. She apologized for not having come sooner upon this errand;
she had resolved upon it as soon as Mr. Lander was gone, but she had been
sick herself, and had only just now got out of bed.

Clementina was too young to feel the pathos of the case fully, or perhaps
even to follow the tortuous course of Mrs. Lander's motives, but she was
moved by her grief; and she could not help a thrill of pleasure in the
vague splendor of the future outlined by Mrs. Lander's proposal. For a