“Lor’ sakes!” says she, “you’re in a mighty berry ter git me off.  Neow you’ve got all you kin out uv me, the letter, ‘n’ the mitt’ns, I may go, may I?  I niver see a young gal so furrard ’ith her elders in all my born days!  I think Stephen Lee’s well quit uv ye, fur my part, ef he hed to die ter du it.  I don’t ’xpect ye ter thank me fur w’at instruction I gi’n ye;—­there’s some folks I niver du ‘xpect nothin’ from; you can’t make a silk pus out uv a sow’s ear.  W’at ye got thet red flag out the keepin’-room winder fur?  ‘Cause Lurindy’s nussin’ Stephen?  Wal, good-day!”

And so Aunt Mimy disappeared, and the pat of butter with her.

I called Lurindy and gave her the letter, and after a little while I heard my name, and Lurindy was sitting on the top of the stairs with her head on her knees, and mother was leaning over the banisters.  Pretty soon Lurindy lifted up her head, and I saw she had been crying, and between the two I made out that Lurindy’d been engaged a good while to John Talbot, who sailed out of Salem on long voyages to India and China; and that now he’d come home, sick with a fever, and was lying at the house of his aunt, who wasn’t well herself; and as he’d given all his money to help a shipmate in trouble, she couldn’t hire him a nurse, and there he was; and, finally, she’d consider it a great favor, if Lurindy would come down and help her.

Now Lurindy’d have gone at once, only she’d been about Stephen, so that she’d certainly carry the contagion, and might be taken sick herself, as soon as she arrived; and mother couldn’t go and take care of John, for the same reason; and there was nobody but me.  Lurindy had a half-eagle that John had given her once to keep; and I got a little bundle together and took all the precautions Dr. Sprague advised; and he drove me off in his sleigh, and said, as he was going about sixteen miles to see a patient, he’d put me on the cars at the nearest station.  Well, he stopped a minute at the post-office, and when he came out he had another letter for Lurindy.  I took it, and, after a moment, concluded I’d better read it.

“What are you about?” says the Doctor; “your name isn’t Lurindy, is it?”

“I wish it was,” says I, “and then I shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh! you’re sorry to leave Stephen?” says he.  “Well, you can comfort yourself with reflecting that Lurindy’s a great deal the best nurse.”

As if that was any comfort!  If Lurindy was the best nurse, she’d ought to have had the privilege of taking care of her own lover, and not of other folks’s.  Besides, for all I knew, Stephen would be dead before ever I came back, and here I was going away and leaving him!  Well, I didn’t feel so very bright; so I read the letter.  The Doctor asked me what ailed John Talbot.  I thought, if I told him that Miss Jane Talbot wrote now so that Lurindy shouldn’t come, and that he was sick just as Stephen was, he wouldn’t let me go.  So I said I supposed he’d burnt his mouth, like the man in the South, eating cold pudding and porridge; men always cried out at a scratch.  And he said, “Oh, do they?” and laughed.