This last remark called forth no answering joke, for Jerry’s companions all knew his kindly nature, and it was no wonder to them that his sympathies were so strongly enlisted for the fair girl thus thrown upon his protection.  It was a big, noble heart over which Jerry Langley buttoned his driver’s coat, and when the physician who had arrived pronounced the lady too ill to proceed any further, he called aside the fidgety landlord, whose peculiarities he well knew, and bade him “not to fret and stew, for if the gal hadn’t money, Jerry Langley was good for a longer time than she would live, poor critter;” and he wiped a tear away, glancing, the while, at the burying-ground which lay just across the garden, and thinking how if she died, her grave should be beneath the wide-spreading oak, where often in the summer nights he sat, counting the head-stones which marked the last resting place of the slumbering host, and wondering if death were, as some had said, a long, eternal sleep.

Aunt Betsey, of whom he had spoken, was the landlady, a little dumpy, pleasant-faced, active woman, equally in her element bending over the steaming gridiron, or smoothing the pillows of the sick-bed, where her powers of nursing had won golden laurels from Others than Jerry Langley.  When the news was brought to the kitchen that among the passengers was a sick girl, who was to be left, her first thought, natural to everybody, was, “What shall I do ?” while the second, natural to her, was, “Take care of her, of course.”

Accordingly, when the dinner was upon the table, she laid aside her broad check apron, substituting in its place a half-worn silk, for Jerry had reported the invalid to be “every inch a lady;” then smoothing her soft, silvery hair with her fat, rosy hands, she repaired to the sitting-room, where she found the driver watching his charge, from whom he kept the buzzing flies by means of his bandana, which he waved to and fro with untiring patience.

“Handsome as a London doll,” was her first exclamation, adding, “but I should think she’d be awful hot with them curls, dangling’ in her neck!  If she’s goin’ to be sick they’d better be cut off!”

If there was any one thing for which Aunt Betsey Aldergrass possessed a particular passion, it was for hair-cutting, she being barber general for Laurel Hill, which numbered about thirty houses, store and church inclusive, and now when she saw the shining tresses which lay in such profusion upon the pillow, her fingers tingled to their very tips, while she involuntarily felt for her scissors!  Very reverentially, as if it were almost sacrilege, Jerry’s broad palm was laid protectingly upon the clustering ringlets, while he said, “No, Aunt Betsey, if she dies for’t, you shan’t touch one of them; ’twould spile her hair, she looks so pretty.”

Slowly the long, fringed lids unclosed, and the brown eyes looked up so gratefully at Jerry, that he beat a precipitate retreat, muttering to himself that “he never could stand the gals, anyway, they made his heart thump so!”