assertion was true, and if Ethelyn would ever be as open and honest with him as he had tried to be with her.  She did not get well very fast, and the color came slowly back into her lips and cheeks.  She was far happier than she had been before since she first came to Olney.  She could not say that she loved her husband as a true wife ought to love a man like Richard Markham, but she found a pleasure in his society which she had never experienced before, while Aunt Barbara’s presence was a constant source of joy.  That good woman had prolonged her stay far beyond what she had thought it possible when she left Chicopee.  She could not tear herself away, when Ethie pleaded so earnestly for her to remain a little longer, and so, wholly impervious to the hints which Mrs. Markham occasionally threw out, that her services were no longer needed as nurse to Ethelyn, she stayed on week after week, seeing far more than she seemed to see, and making up her mind pretty accurately with regard to the prospect of Ethie’s happiness, if she remained an inmate of her husband’s family.

Aunt Barbara and Mrs. Markham did not harmonize at all.  At first, when Ethie was so sick, everything had been merged in the one absorbing thought of her danger, and even the knowledge accidentally obtained that Richard had paid Miss Bigelow’s fare out there and would pay it back, had failed to produce more than a passing pang in the bosom of the close, calculating, economical Mrs. Markham; but when the danger was past, it kept recurring again and again, with very unpleasant distinctness, that Aunt Barbara was an expense they could well do without.  Nobody could quarrel with Aunt Barbara—­she was so mild, and gentle, and peaceable—­and Mrs. Markham did not quarrel with her, but she thought about her all the time, and fretted over her, and remembered the letter she had written about her ways and her being good to Ethie, and wondered what she was there for, and why she did not go home, and asked her what time they generally cleaned house in Chicopee, and if she dared trust her cleaning with Betty.  Aunt Barbara was a great annoyance, and she complained to Eunice and Mrs. Jones, and Melinda, who had returned from Washington, that she was spoiling Ethelyn, babying her so, and making her think herself so much weaker than she was.

“Mercy knew,” she said, that in her day, when she was young and having children, she did not hug the bed forever.  She had something else to do, and was up and around in a fortnight at the most.  Her table wasn’t loaded down with oranges and figs, and the things they called banannys, which fairly made her sick at her stomach.  Nobody was carryin’ her up glasses of milk-punch, and lemonade, and cups of tea, at all hours of the day.  She was glad of anything, and got well the faster for it.  Needn’t tell her!—­it would do Ethelyn good to stir around and take the air, instead of staying cooped up in her room, complaining that it is hot and close there in the bedroom.  “It’s airy enough out doors,” and with a most aggrieved look on her face, Mrs. Markham put into the oven the pan of soda biscuit she had been making, and then proceeded to lay the cloth for tea.