“It’s no time now for him to be forming new habits,” said she, in answer to my open-eyed surprise; “and it’s best he should have all the comfort and ease he can get.  As long as I can get it for him, he shall have it.”

She spoke very quietly, but very much as if the same will of her own which had led her to marry Jim Ruggles, when a gay, dissipated fellow, kept her determined to give him what he wanted, even to the doubtful extreme I saw.  So she struggled bravely on during the next four weeks of Jim’s existence, keeping herself and her three children on hasty pudding, and buying for Jim’s consumptively craving appetite rich mince-pies and platefuls of good rich food from an eating-house hard by.  At the end of the four weeks he died most peacefully and suddenly, having not five minutes before swallowed a glass of gin sling, prepared by the loving hand of his wife, and saying to her, with a firm, clear voice, and a grateful smile, “Good Amy! always good!” So the weak man’s soul passed away.  And as Amy told me about it, with sorrowful sobs, I was not ready to say or think she had done wrong, although both her conduct and my opinion were entirely uncanonical.

Before Mrs. Lewis returned, Amy was one day at my room and asked me when I expected her back.

“Is Mr. Lewis with her, Ma’am?” said she, hesitatingly.

“Of course; at least, I suppose so.  Why, what makes you ask?” said I, with surprise at her downcast eyes and flushed face.

“I heard he had gone away.  And that—­that Mr. Remington was there with her.  But you know about it, most likely.”

“No, I know nothing about it, Amy.”

“It was their old cook told me, Mrs. Butler.  And she said,—­oh! all sorts of things, that I am sure couldn’t be true, for Mrs. Lewis is such a kind, beautiful woman!  I couldn’t believe a word she said!”

In my quality of minister’s wife, and with a general distrust of cooks’ opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a waste of time to listen to it.  But after she left me, I confess to a whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy’s communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon for a like space of time to consider the matter fully.

I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming, happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor done anything very bad.

The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks.  While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more.  The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour.  I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.