Jane Field read the letter through twice, then she folded it, replaced it in the envelope, and stood erect by the store door.  She could see Mrs. Green’s broad shawled back among the customers at the calico counter.  Once in a while she looked around with a beseeching and apologetic smile.

Mrs. Field thought, “I won’t say a word to her about it.”  However, she was conscious of no evil motive; it was simply because she was naturally secretive.  She looked pale and rigid.

Mrs. Green remarked it when she finally approached with her parcel of calico.

“Why, what’s the matter, Mis’ Field?” she exclaimed.  “You ain’t sick, be you?”

“No.  Why?”

“Seems to me you look dreadful pale.  It was too bad to keep you standin’ there so long, but I couldn’t get waited on before.  I think Mr. Robbins had ought to have more help.  It’s too much for him with only two clerks, an’ the post-office to tend, too.  I see you got a letter.”  Mrs. Field nodded.  The two women went down the steps into the street.

“How’s Lois to-night?” Mrs. Green asked as they went along.

“I guess she’s about as usual.  She didn’t say but what she was.”

“She ain’t left off her school, has she?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Field, stiffly, “she ain’t.”

Suddenly Mrs. Green stopped and laid a heavy hand on Mrs. Field’s arm.  “Look here, Mis’ Field, I dun’no’ as you’ll thank me for it, but I’m goin’ to speak real plain to you, the way I’d thank anybody to if ’twas my Jenny.  I’m dreadful afraid you don’t realize how bad Lois is, Mis’ Field.”

“Mebbe I don’t.”  Mrs. Field’s voice sounded hard.

The other woman looked perplexedly at her for a moment, then she went on: 

“Well, if you do, mebbe I hadn’t ought to said anything; but I was dreadful afraid you didn’t, an’ then when you come to, perhaps when ’twas too late, you’d never forgive yourself.  She hadn’t ought to teach school another day, Mis’ Field.”

“I dun’no how it’s goin’ to be helped,” Mrs. Field said again, in her hard voice.

“Mis’ Field, I know it ain’t any of my business, an’ I don’t know but you’ll think I’m interferin’; but I can’t help it nohow when I think of—­my Abby, an’ how—­she went down. Ain’t you got anybody that could help you a little while till she gets better an’ able to work?”

“I dun’no’ of anybody.”

“Wouldn’t your sister’s husband’s father?  Ain’t he got considerable property?”

Mrs. Field turned suddenly, her voice sharpened, “I’ve asked him all I’m ever goin’ to—­there!  I let Esther’s husband have fifteen hundred dollars that my poor husband saved out of his hard earnin’s, an’ he lost it in his business; an’ after he died I wrote to his father, an’ I told him about it.  I thought mebbe he’d be willin’ to be fair, an’ pay his son’s debts, if he didn’t have much feelin’.  There was Esther an’ Lois an’ me, an’