“What be I going to do, mother, without you and Major?  I ’most died of clear lonesomeness before you come!”

Mother laid down her knittin’, and looked straight at me.

“I wish you’d got a little of Major’s good cheer, Anny,” says she.  “You haven’t any call to be lonely here; it’s a real good country, and you’ve got a nice house, and the best of husbands, and a dear little baby, and you’d oughter try to give up frettin’.  I wish you was pious, Anny; you wouldn’t fault the Lord’s goodness the way you do.”

“Well, Major don’t have nothin’ to trouble her, mother,” says I.  “She’s all safe and pleasant to home; she a’n’t homesick.”

Mother spoke up pretty resolute:—­

“There a’n’t nobody in the world, Anny, but what has troubles.  I didn’t calculate to tell you about Major’s; but sence you lay her lively ways to luck, may-be you’d better know ’em.  She’s been engaged this six months to Reuben Potter, and he’s goin’ off in a slow consumption; he won’t never live to marry her, and she knows it.”

“And she come away to see me, mother?”

“Yes, she did.  I can’t say I thought she need to, but Russell wrote you was pinin’ for both of us, and I didn’t think you could get along without me, but I told her to stay with Reuben, and I’d come on alone.  And says she, ’No, mother, you a’n’t young and spry enough to go alone so fur, and the Lord made you my mother and Anny my sister before I picked out Reuben for myself.  I can’t never have any kin but you, and I might have had somebody beside Reuben, though it don’t seem likely now; but he’s got four sisters to take care of him, and he thinks and I think it’s what I ought to do; so I’m goin’ with you.’  So she come, Anny; and you see how lively she keeps, just because she don’t want to dishearten you none.  I don’t know as you can blame her for kinder hankerin’ to get home.”

I hadn’t nothin’ to say; I was beat.  So mother she went on:—­

“Fact is, Anny, Major’s always a-thinkin’ about other folks; it comes kind of nateral to her, and then bein’ pious helps it.  I guess, dear, when you get to thinkin’ more about Russell an’ the baby, you’ll forget some of your troubles.  I hope the Lord won’t have to give you no harder lesson than lovin’, to teach you Major’s ways.”

So, after that, I couldn’t say no more to mother about stayin’; but when they went away, I like to have cried myself sick,—­only baby had to be looked after, and I couldn’t dodge her.

Bym-by we had letters from home; they got there all safe, and Reuben wa’n’t no worse, Major said;—­ef’t had been me wrote the letter, I should have said he wa’n’t no better!—­And I fell back into the old lonesome days, for baby slept mostly; and the summer come on extreme hot; and in July, Russell, bein’ forced to go to Cumberton on some land business, left me to home with baby and the hired man, calculatin’ to be gone three days and two nights.