president of the board was speaking hastily and from a full heart,
conscious that another instant's discussion might bring the tears to
her eyes:--

"May I be allowed to say--it's irrelevant, I know, but I should like
the satisfaction of saying it--that this is enough to make one vow
never to have anything to do with an institution of any sort, from this
time forth for evermore?"

For the moment had apparently come when a chronic annoyance must be
recognized as unendurable. They had borne with the trial, inmates and
directors, quite as cheerfully as most ordinary people accept the
inevitable; but suddenly the tension had become too great, and the
universal patience snapped. Two of the old ladies, Mrs. Blair and Miss
Dyer, who were settled in the Home for life, and who, before going
there, had shown no special waywardness of temper, had proved utterly
incapable of living in peace with any available human being; and as the
Home had insufficient accommodations, neither could be isolated to
fight her "black butterflies" alone. No inmate, though she were cousin
to Hercules, could be given a room to herself; and the effect of this
dual system on these two, possibly the most eccentric of the number,
had proved disastrous in the extreme. Each had, in her own favorite
fashion, "kicked over the traces," as the matron's son said in
town-meeting (much to the joy of the village fathers), and to such
purpose that, to continue the light-minded simile, very little harness
was left to guide them withal. Mrs. Blair, being "high sperited," like
all the Coxes from whom she sprung, had now so tyrannized over the last
of her series of room-mates, so browbeaten and intimidated her, that
the latter had actually taken to her bed with a slow-fever of
discouragement, announcing that "she'd rather go to the poor-farm and