For the door-bell was, perhaps, among many, one of Aunt Pen’s weakest points.  She knew everybody in town, as you might say.  She was exceedingly entertaining to everybody outside the family.  She was a great favorite with everybody.  Countless gossips came to see her, tinkling at the door-bell, and hated individually by Israel, brought her all the news, heard all the previous ones had brought, admired her, praised her, pitied her, listened to her, and went away leaving her in such satisfied mood that she did not die any more that day.  And as they went away they always paused at the door to say to some one of us what a cheerful invalid Aunt Pen had made herself, and what a nest of sunbeams her room always was, and what a lesson her patience and endurance ought to be.  But, oh dear me, how very little they knew about it all!

We all lived together, as it happened; for when we children were left alone with but a small income, Aunt Pen—­who was also alone, and only five years my senior—­wrote word that we might as well come to her house in the city, for it wouldn’t make expenses more, and might make them less if we divided them; and then, too, she said she would always be sure of one out of three bright and reasonable nurses.  Poor Aunt Pen! perhaps she didn’t find us either so bright or so reasonable as she had expected; for we used to think that in her less degree she went on the same principle with the crazy man who declared all the rest of the world except himself insane.

In honest truth, as doctor after doctor was turned away by the impatient and distempered woman up-stairs, each one took occasion to say to us down-stairs that our aunt’s illness was of that nature that all the physic it required was to have her fancies humored, and that we never need give ourselves any uneasiness, for she would doubtless live to a good old age, unless some acute disease should intervene, as there was nothing at all the matter with her except a slight nervous sensitiveness, that never destroyed anybody.  I suppose we were a set of young heathen, for really there were times, if you will believe it, when that was not the most reassuring statement in the world.

However.  Sometimes Aunt Pen found a doctor, or a medicine, or a course of diet, or something, that gave her great sensations of relief, and then she would come down, and go about the house, and praise our administration, and say every thing went twice as far as it used to go before we came, and tell us delightful stories, of our mother’s housewifely skill, and be quite herself again; and she would make the table ring with laughing, and give charming little tea-parties; and then we all did wish that Aunt Pen would live forever—­and be down-stairs.  But probably the next day, after one of the tea-parties, oysters, or claret punch, or hot cakes, or all together, had wrought their diablerie, and the doctor was sent for, and the warming-pan was brought out, and there was another six weeks’ siege, in which, obeyed