I closed my eyes this night, I would know whether or not such a prize as that were in my reach.  I say prize because I never heard of such a chance being offered to a doctor’s wife in a country town.  Now what are you going to do about it, Kitty?  If your regard for your husband’s physical condition is not sufficient to make you look on this matter as I do, think of his soul.  If you don’t believe that true religion and good cooking go hand in hand, wait a year and then see what sort of a husband you will have.”

Mrs. Tolbridge felt that she ought to resent this speech, that she ought to be, at least, a little angry; but when she was a small girl, Miss Panney was an old woman who sometimes used to scold her.  She had not minded the scoldings very much then, and she could not bring herself to mind this scolding very much now.  Occasionally she had scolded Miss Panney, and the old lady had never been angry.

“I shall not go to the city,” she said, with a smile; “but I will write, and ask all the questions.  Then our consciences will be easier.”

Miss Panney rose to her feet.

“Do it, I beg of you,” she said, “and do it this morning.  And now, Dora, if you walked here, I will drive you home in my phaeton, for you ought to send that address to Mrs. Tolbridge without delay.”

As the old roan jogged away from the doctor’s house, Miss Panney remarked to her companion, “I needn’t have hurried you off so soon, Dora, for it is three hours before the next mail will leave; but I did want Mrs. Tolbridge to sit down at once and write that letter without being interrupted by anything which you might have come to tell her.  Of course, the sooner you send her the address, the better.”

“The boy shall take it to her as soon as I get home,” said Dora.

She very much disliked scoldings, and had not now a word to say against the old body who would frighten the horses.  Desirous of turning the conversation in another direction without seeming to force it, “It seems to me,” she said, “that Mr. and Miss Haverley ought to have somebody better to cook for them than old Phoebe.  I have always looked upon her as a sort of a charwoman, working about from house to house, doing anything that people hired her to do.”

“That’s just what those Haverleys want,” said Miss Panney.  “At present, everything is charwork at their place, and as to their food, I don’t suppose they think much about it, so that they get enough.  At their age they can eat anything.”

“How old is Miss Haverley?” asked Dora.

“Miss Haverley!” repeated Miss Panney, “she’s nothing but a girl, with her hair down her back and her skirts a foot from the ground.  I call her a child.”

A shadow came over the soul of Miss Bannister.

Would it be possible, she thought, to maintain, with a girl who did not yet put up her hair or wear long skirts, the intimacy she had hoped to maintain with Mr. Haverley’s sister?