forth, very much in the same manner that Ester was doing on that first evening of our acquaintance, only there was not so much method in her rushing.  The curtains were raised as high as the tapes would take them, and the slant rays of the yellow sun were streaming boldly in, doing their bravest to melt into oil the balls of butter on the table, for poor, tired, bewildered Sadie had forgotten to let down the shades, and forgotten the ice for the butter, and had laid the table cloth crookedly, and had no time to straighten it.  This had been one of her trying days.  The last fierce look of summer had parched anew the fevered limbs of the sufferer up stairs, and roused to sharper conflict the bewildered brain.  Mrs. Ried’s care had been earnest and unremitting, and Sadie, in her unaccustomed position of mistress below stairs, had reached the very verge of bewildered weariness.  She gave nervous glances at the inexorable clock as she flew back and forth.  There were those among Mrs. Ried’s boarders whose business made it almost a necessity that they should be promptly served at five o’clock.  Maggie had been hurriedly summoned to do an imperative errand connected with the sick room; and this inexperienced butterfly, with her wings sadly drooping, was trying to gather her scattered wits together sufficiently to get that dreadful tea-table ready for the thirteen boarders who were already waiting the summons.

“What did I come after?” she asked herself impatiently, as she pressed her hand to her frowning forehead, and stared about the pantry in a vain attempt to decide what had brought her there in such hot haste.  “Oh, a spoon—­no, a fork, I guess it was.  Why, I don’t remember the forks at all.  As sure as I’m here, I believe they are, too, instead of being on the table; and—­Oh, my patience, I believe those biscuits are burning.  I wonder if they are done.  Oh, dear me!” And the young lady, who was Mr. Hammond’s star scholar, bent with puzzled, burning face, and received hot whiffs of breath from the indignant oven while she tried to discover whether the biscuits were ready to be devoured.  It was an engrossing employment.  She did not hear the sound of carriage wheels near the door, nor the banging of trunks on the side piazza.  She was half way across the dining-room, with her tin of puffy biscuits in her hands, with the puzzled, doubtful look still on her face, before she felt the touch of two soft, loving arms around her neck, and turning quickly, she screamed, rather than said:  “Oh, Ester!” And suddenly seating her tin of biscuit on one chair and herself on another, Sadie covered her face with both hands and actually cried.

“Why, Sadie, you poor dear child, what can be the matter?”

And Ester’s voice was full of anxiety, for it was almost the first time that she had ever seen tears on that bright young face.

Sadie’s first remark caused a sudden revulsion of feeling.  Springing suddenly to her feet, she bent anxious eyes on the chair full of biscuit.