Mary saw that Mrs. Mason could hardly repress a smile as she replied, “I am glad about the temper and manners, but the scouring of knives is of little consequence, for Judith always does that.”

Sal Furbush, who had courtesied herself into the room, now asked to say a word concerning Mary.  “She is,” said she, “the very apple of my eye, and can parse a sentence containing three double relatives, two subjunctive moods and four nominatives absolute, perfectly easily.”

“I see you are a favorite here,” said Mrs. Mason, laying her hand gently on Mary’s head, “and I think that in time you will be quite as much of one with me, so one week from Saturday you may expect me.”

There was something so very affectionate in Mrs. Mason’s manner of speaking, that Mary could not keep her tears back; and when Sally, chancing to be in a poetic mood, said to her, “Maiden, wherefore weepest thou?” she replied, “I can’t help it.  She speaks so kind, and makes me think of mother.”

“Speaks so kindly, you mean,” returned Sal, while Mrs. Mason, brushing a tear from her own eye, whispered to the little girl, “I will be a mother to you, my child;” then, as Mr. Knight had finished discussing the weather with Mr. Parker, she stepped into his buggy, and was driven away.

“That’s what I call a thoroughly grammatical lady,” said Sal, looking after her until a turn in the road hid her from view, “and I shall try to be resigned, though the vital spark leaves this house when Mary goes.”

Not long after, Rind asked Miss Grundy if William Bender was going away.

“Not as I know on,” answered Miss Grundy.  “What made you think of that?”

“’Cause,” returned Rind, “I heard Sal Furbush having over a mess of stuff about the spark’s leaving when Mary did, and I thought mebby he was going, as you say he’s her spark!”

The next afternoon Jenny, managing to elude the watchful eyes of her mother and governess, came over to the poor-house.

“I’m so glad you are going,” said she, when she heard of Mrs. Mason’s visit.  “I shall be lonesome without you, but you’ll have such a happy home, and when you get there mayn’t I tell George Moreland about you the next time I see him?”

“I’d rather you wouldn’t,” said Mary, “for I don’t believe he remembers me at all.”

“Perhaps not,” returned Jenny, “and I guess you wouldn’t know him; for besides being so tall, he has begun to shave, and Ida thinks he’s trying to raise whiskers!”

That night, when Mary was alone, she drew from its hiding-place the golden locket, but the charm was broken, and the pleasure she had before experienced in looking at it, now faded away with Jenny’s picture of a whiskered young man, six feet high!  Very rapidly indeed did Mary’s last week at the poor-house pass away, and for some reason or other, every thing went on, as Rind said, “wrong end up.”  Miss Grundy was crosser than usual, though all observed that her voice grew milder in its tone whenever she addressed Mary, and once she went so far as to say, by way of a general remark, that she “never yet treated any body, particularly a child, badly, without feeling sorry for it.”