I almost believe that at one period, had I been set to say who I was, I
should have included Rover as an essential part of myself. His tail was
my tail; his legs were my legs; his tongue was my tongue!--so much more
did I, as we gambolled together, seem conscious of his joy than of my
own! Surely, among other and greater mercies, I shall find him again! The
next person I see busy about the place, now here now there in the house,
and seldom outside it, is Miss Martha Moon. The house is large, built at
a time when the family was one of consequence, and there was always much
to be done in it. The largest room in it is now called the kitchen, but
was doubtless called the hall when first it was built. This was Miss
Martha Moon's headquarters.

She was my uncle's second cousin, and as he always called her Martha, so
did I, without rebuke: every one else about the place called her Miss
Martha.

Of much greater worth and much more genuine refinement than tens of
thousands the world calls ladies, she never claimed the distinction.
Indeed she strongly objected to it. If you had said or implied she was
a lady, she would have shrunk as from a covert reflection on the quality
of her work. Had she known certain of such as nowadays call themselves
lady-helps, I could have understood her objection. I think, however, it
came from a stern adherence to the factness--if I may coin the word--of
things. She never called a lie a fib.

When she was angry, she always held her tongue; she feared being unfair.
She had indeed a rare power of silence. To this day I do not _know_, but
am nevertheless sure that, by an instinct of understanding, she saw into
my uncle's trouble, and descried, more or less plainly, the secret of it,
while yet she never even alluded to the existence of such a trouble. She