“‘You are another, young man; she’s got her pretty claw on you,’ thinks I, but I didn’t say anythin’ to him.  I just said over to Mrs. Sam Abbot that Luella was in the kitchen, and Mrs. Sam Abbot she went out there, and I went, too, and I never heard anythin’ like the way she talked to Luella Miller.  I felt pretty hard to Luella myself, but this was more than I ever would have dared to say.  Luella she was too scared to go into hysterics.  She jest flopped.  She seemed to jest shrink away to nothin’ in that kitchen chair, with Mrs. Sam Abbot standin’ over her and talkin’ and tellin’ her the truth.  I guess the truth was most too much for her and no mistake, because Luella presently actually did faint away, and there wa’n’t any sham about it, the way I always suspected there was about them hysterics.  She fainted dead away and we had to lay her flat on the floor, and the Doctor he came runnin’ out and he said somethin’ about a weak heart dreadful fierce to Mrs. Sam Abbot, but she wa’n’t a mite scared.  She faced him jest as white as even Luella was layin’ there lookin’ like death and the Doctor feelin’ of her pulse.

“‘Weak heart,’ says she, ’weak heart; weak fiddlesticks!  There ain’t nothin’ weak about that woman.  She’s got strength enough to hang onto other folks till she kills ’em.  Weak?  It was my poor mother that was weak:  this woman killed her as sure as if she had taken a knife to her.’

“But the Doctor he didn’t pay much attention.  He was bendin’ over Luella layin’ there with her yellow hair all streamin’ and her pretty pink-and-white face all pale, and her blue eyes like stars gone out, and he was holdin’ onto her hand and smoothin’ her forehead, and tellin’ me to get the brandy in Aunt Abby’s room, and I was sure as I wanted to be that Luella had got somebody else to hang onto, now Aunt Abby was gone, and I thought of poor Erastus Miller, and I sort of pitied the poor young Doctor, led away by a pretty face, and I made up my mind I’d see what I could do.

“I waited till Aunt Abby had been dead and buried about a month, and the Doctor was goin’ to see Luella steady and folks were beginnin’ to talk; then one evenin’, when I knew the Doctor had been called out of town and wouldn’t be round, I went over to Luella’s.  I found her all dressed up in a blue muslin with white polka dots on it, and her hair curled jest as pretty, and there wa’n’t a young girl in the place could compare with her.  There was somethin’ about Luella Miller seemed to draw the heart right out of you, but she didn’t draw it out of me.  She was settin’ rocking in the chair by her sittin’-room window, and Maria Brown had gone home.  Maria Brown had been in to help her, or rather to do the work, for Luella wa’n’t helped when she didn’t do anythin’.  Maria Brown was real capable and she didn’t have any ties; she wa’n’t married, and lived alone, so she’d offered.  I couldn’t see why she should do the work any more than Luella;