“Now don’t you go and take on, Mrs. Denover,” observed Mr. Parmalee, “or you’ll use yourself up, you know, and then you won’t be able to travel to-morrow.  And after to-morrow, and after you see your——­ Well, my lady, there’s the other little trip back to Uncle Sam’s domains you’ve got to make; for you ain’t a-going to stay in England and pester that poor young lady’s life out?”

“No,” said Mrs. Denover, mournfully—­“no, I will never trouble her again.  Only let me see her once more, and I will go back to my native land and wait until the merciful God sends me death.”

“Oh, pooh!” said the artist; “don’t you talk like that—­it kind of makes my flesh creep, and there ain’t no sense in it.  There’s Aunt Deborah, down to our section—­you remind me of her—­she was always going on so, wishing she was in heaven, or something horrid, the whole time.  It’s want of victuals more than anything else.  You haven’t had any dinner, I’ll be bound!”

“No; I could not eat.”

“Nor supper?”

“No:  I never thought of it.”

Mr. Parmalee got up, and was out of the room and hanging over the baluster in a twinkling.

“Here you, Jane Anne!”

Jane Anne appeared.

“Fetch up supper and look sharp—­supper for two.  Go ’round the corner and get us some oysters and a pint of port, and fetch up some baked potatoes and hot mutton chops—­and quick about it.”

“Now, then,” said Mr. Parmalee, reappearing, “I’ve dispatched the slavery for provisions, and you’ve got to eat when they come.  I won’t have people living on one meal a day, and wishing they were in heaven, when I’m around.”

“I will do whatever you think best, Mr. Parmalee,” she said, humbly.  “You have been very good to me.”

“I know it,” said Mr. Parmalee.  “I always do the polite thing with your sex.  My mother was a woman.  She’s down in Maine now, and can churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie.  Oh! them squash pies of my old lady’s require to be eat to be believed in; and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress.  Here’s the forage.  Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and dump ’em down and go.”

Jane Anne did.

“Now, Mrs. Denover, you sit right up and fall to.  Here’s oysters, and here’s mutton chops, raging hot, and baked potatoes—­delicious to look at.  And here’s a glass of port wine, and you’ve got to drink it without a whimper.  Mind what I told you; you don’t budge a step to-morrow unless you eat a hearty supper to-night.”

“You are very good to me,” Mrs. Denover repeated.  “What would have become of me but for you?”

She strove to eat and drink to please him and to sustain her feeble strength, but every morsel seemed to choke her.  She pushed away her plate at last and looked at him imploringly.

“I can not eat another mouthful.  Indeed I would if I could.  I have no appetite at all of late.”