“Is it true that Amos Quimby has jilted Hannah on account of—?”

“Guess so.  He hasn’t been near her since.”

“Ain’t it a shame?”

“Hannah’s got to live with what’s heaped on her shoulders, too,” said Lucinda.  “Folks had ought to be thankful when the loads come from other people’s hands, instead of their own, and make the best of it.  Hannah has got a good appetite.  It ain’t going to kill her.  She can go away from East Westland by-and-by if she wants to, and get another beau.  Folks didn’t suspect her much, anyway.  I’ve got the brunt of it.”

“Lucinda,” said Sylvia, earnestly.  “Folks can’t really believe you’d go and do such a thing.”

“It’s like flies after molasses,” said Lucinda.  “I never felt I was so sweet before in my life.”

“What can they think you’d go and poison a good, steady boarder like that for?”

“She paid a dollar a day,” said Lucinda.

“I know she did.”

“And I liked her,” said Lucinda.  “I know lots of folks didn’t, but I did.  I know what folks said, and I’ll own I found things in her room, but I don’t care what folks do to their outsides as long as their insides are right.  Miss Farrel was a real good woman, and she had a kind of hard time, too.”

“Why, I thought she had a real good place in the high-school; and teachers earn their money dreadful easy.”

“It wasn’t that.”

“What was it?”

Lucinda hesitated.  “Well,” she said, finally, “it can’t do her any harm, now she’s dead and gone, and I don’t know as it was anything against her, anyway.  She just set her eyes by your boarder.”

“Not Mr. Allen?  You don’t mean Mr. Allen, Lucinda?”

“What other boarder have you had?  I’ve known about it for a long time.  Hannah and me both have known, but we never opened our lips, and I don’t want it to go any further now.”

“How did you find out?”

“By keeping my eyes and ears open.  How does anybody find out anything?”

“I don’t believe Mr. Allen ever once thought of her,” said Sylvia, and there was resentment in her voice.

“Of course he didn’t.  Maybe he’ll take a shine to that girl you’ve got with you now.”

“Neither one of them has even thought of such a thing,” declared Sylvia, and her voice was almost violent.

“Well, I don’t know,” Lucinda said, indifferently.  “I have had too much to look out for of my own affairs since the girl came to know anything about that.  I only thought of their being in the same house.  I always had sort of an idea myself that maybe Lucy Ayres would be the one.”

“I hadn’t,” said Sylvia.  “Not but she—­well, she looked real sick to-day.  She didn’t look fit to stand up there and sing.  I should think her mother would be worried about her.  And she don’t sing half as well as you do.”

“Yes, she does,” replied Lucinda.  “She sings enough sight better than I do.”