Mary remembered that Billy would not come if it rained, and with a sigh she noticed that the clouds were dark and threatening.  They now entered the kitchen, which was a long, low, narrow room, with a fireplace on the right, and two windows opposite, looking towards the west.  The floor was painted and very clean, but the walls were unfinished, and the brown rafters were festooned with cobwebs.  In the middle of the room, the supper table was standing, but there was nothing homelike in the arrangement of the many colored dishes and broken knives and forks, neither was there any thing tempting to one’s appetite in the coarse brown bread and white-looking butter.  Mary was very tired with holding Alice so long, and sinking into a chair near the window, she would have cried; but there was a tightness in her throat, and a pressure about her head and eyes, which kept the tears from flowing.  She had felt so once before.  Twas when she stood at her mother’s grave; and now as the room grew dark, and the objects around began to turn in circles, she pressed her hands tightly to her forehead, and said, ’Oh, I hope I shan’t faint.”

“To be sure you won’t,” said a loud, harsh voice, and instantly large drops of water were thrown in her face, while the same voice continued:  “You don’t have such spells often, I hope, for Lord knows I don’t want any more fitty ones here.”

“No, ma’am,” said Mary, meekly; and looking up, she saw before her a tall, square-backed, masculine-looking woman, who wore a very short dress, and a very high-crowned cap, fastened under her chin with bows of sky-blue ribbon.

Mary knew she was indebted to this personage for the shower bath, for the water was still trickling from her fingers, which were now engaged in picking her teeth with a large pin.  There was something exceedingly cross and forbidding in her looks, and Mary secretly hoped she would not prove to be Mrs. Parker, the wife of the overseer.  She was soon relieved of her fears by the overseer himself, who came forward and said, “Polly, I don’t see any other way but you’ll have to take these children into the room next to yourn.  The baby worries a good deal, and such things trouble my wife, now she’s sick.”

The person addressed as “Polly,” gave her shoulders an angry jerk, and sticking the pin on the waist of her dress, replied, “So I s’pose it’s no matter if I’m kept awake all night, and worried to death.  But I guess you’d find there’d be queer doins here if I should be taken away.  I wish the British would stay to hum, and not lug their young ones here for us to take care of.”

This was said with a lowering frown, and movement towards Mary, who shrank back into the corner and covered her mouth with her hand, as if that were the cause of offence.

“But you can take an extra nap after dinner,” said Mr. Parker, in a conciliatory manner.  “And then you are so good at managing children, that I thought they would be better off near you.”