The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines
growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked in
a queer, constrained voice.

"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
days."

"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked softly, eagerly.

Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.

"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you
used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't,
if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get
in the East, where it's so damp."

Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said
in reply:

"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt
Kate; and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But
I couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks
now, for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing
and dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any
more, and I had to come to George's father with George's boy."

Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and it was tactful, too. She did not