CHAPTER VI.

BRANCHING OUT.

To Miss Pillbody, this quiet little arrangement proved a fortune indeed.  In two weeks after she became acquainted with her benefactress, she was rich enough to take lodgings for her mother and herself at a decent boarding house.  The old lady entertained singular notions about the rights of relationship, and held that it was the duty of her husband’s brothers to give them a home for the balance of their lives, and regarded her daughter’s desire to cut loose from her uncles, and be independent, as a romantic and absurd notion, born of novel reading, to which Miss Pillbody was a good deal addicted.

To gratify her daughter’s whim, the widow Pillbody finally consented to move into a boarding house, though she did it in the firm belief that the good luck which the young lady had fallen upon would be of brief duration, and they would be glad to come back to their relatives again—­their “natteral protectors,” as Mrs. P. called them.

In their new residence, Miss Pillbody was happy.  The money which she earned weekly, and which was always paid to her in advance, was sufficient for her own and her mother’s board.  In addition to other presents, Mrs. Crull had forced small sums upon her acceptance, at different times; and Miss Pillbody began to enjoy the odd sensation of laying up money in a savings bank.  Of the future she thought but little; first, because she had no head for plans; and second, because Mrs. Crull had promised to set her up in a private school; and Miss Pillbody placed a blind trust in that lady.  An accident, in this wise, caused the fulfilment of the promise much sooner than was expected.

Mr. Crull, in getting out of a stage, one day, slipped on the step, and dislocated his left shoulder.  At his age, careful treatment was necessary for an injury of that kind; and the family doctor peremptorily forbade him to leave the house for a month.  Mr. Crull therefore stayed at home, growling like a bear in a cage, and solacing himself with the determination to bring a suit for damages against the stage company, the carelessness of whose driver (in Mr. Crull’s opinion) caused the accident.

Mr. Crull, like a good husband, would have nobody to nurse him, apply his embrocations, and put on his bandages, but his wife; and Mrs. Crull, like a good wife, cheerfully and tenderly performed that duty.  But this rendered necessary the abandonment of the daily lessons at her house; for she was liable to be summoned to her husband’s bedside at any moment (he sent for her at every new twinge of pain); and, furthermore, it was his custom to crawl out of his couch every half hour, and wander restlessly through the house, until his wife, under the stern instructions of the family doctor, sent him back to bed again.

Mrs. Crull, though not wanting in love for her disabled consort, was loth to abandon her lessons.  Having tasted of the Pierian spring, she desired to drink deeply.