“Well, I went there to teach school, and I went to board with a Mrs. Amelia Dennison and her sister, Mrs. Bird.  Abby, her name was—­Abby Bird.  She was a widow; she had never had any children.  She had a little money—­Mrs. Dennison didn’t have any—­and she had come to East Wilmington and bought the house they lived in.  It was a real pretty house, though it was very old and run down.  It had cost Mrs. Bird a good deal to put it in order.  I guess that was the reason they took me to board.  I guess they thought it would help along a little.  I guess what I paid for my board about kept us all in victuals.  Mrs. Bird had enough to live on if they were careful, but she had spent so much fixing up the old house that they must have been a little pinched for awhile.

“Anyhow, they took me to board, and I thought I was pretty lucky to get in there.  I had a nice room, big and sunny and furnished pretty, the paper and paint all new, and everything as neat as wax.  Mrs. Dennison was one of the best cooks I ever saw, and I had a little stove in my room, and there was always a nice fire there when I got home from school.  I thought I hadn’t been in such a nice place since I lost my own home, until I had been there about three weeks.

“I had been there about three weeks before I found it out, though I guess it had been going on ever since they had been in the house, and that was most four months.  They hadn’t said anything about it, and I didn’t wonder, for there they had just bought the house and been to so much expense and trouble fixing it up.

“Well, I went there in September.  I begun my school the first Monday.  I remember it was a real cold fall, there was a frost the middle of September, and I had to put on my winter coat.  I remember when I came home that night (let me see, I began school on a Monday, and that was two weeks from the next Thursday), I took off my coat downstairs and laid it on the table in the front entry.  It was a real nice coat—­heavy black broadcloth trimmed with fur; I had had it the winter before.  Mrs. Bird called after me as I went upstairs that I ought not to leave it in the front entry for fear somebody might come in and take it, but I only laughed and called back to her that I wasn’t afraid.  I never was much afraid of burglars.

“Well, though it was hardly the middle of September, it was a real cold night.  I remember my room faced west, and the sun was getting low, and the sky was a pale yellow and purple, just as you see it sometimes in the winter when there is going to be a cold snap.  I rather think that was the night the frost came the first time.  I know Mrs. Dennison covered up some flowers she had in the front yard, anyhow.  I remember looking out and seeing an old green plaid shawl of hers over the verbena bed.  There was a fire in my little wood-stove.  Mrs. Bird made it, I know.  She was a real motherly sort of woman; she always seemed to be the happiest when she was doing something to make other folks happy and comfortable.  Mrs. Dennison told me she had always been so.  She said she had coddled her husband within an inch of his life.  ’It’s lucky Abby never had any children,’ she said, ‘for she would have spoilt them.’