“Wait!  Hold on!  What are you going to say to the pooa thing?  She’ll be so disappointed!”

“I don’t know as I shall need to say anything myself,” answered the little man, at his dryest.  “Leave that to you.”

“Well, I can tell you,” returned his wife, “I’m not goin’ nea’ them again; and if you think—­What did you ask the woman, anyway?”

“I asked her,” he said, “if she wanted to let the gul come and see you about some sewing you had to have done, and she said she did.”

“And you didn’t speak about havin’ her come to live with us?”

“No.”

“Well, why in the land didn’t you say so before, Albe’t?”

“You didn’t ask me.  What do you want I should say to her now?”

“Say to who?”

“The gul.  She’s down in the pahlor, waitin’.”

“Well, of all the men!” cried Mrs. Lander.  But she seemed to find herself, upon reflection, less able to cope with Lander personally than with the situation generally.  “Will you send her up, Albe’t?” she asked, very patiently, as if he might be driven to further excesses, if not delicately handled.  As soon as he had gone out of the room she wished that she had told him to give her time to dress and have her room put in order, before he sent the child up; but she could only make the best of herself in bed with a cap and a breakfast jacket, arranged with the help of a handglass.  She had to get out of bed to put her other clothes away in the closet and she seized the chance to push the breakfast tray out of the door, and smooth up the bed, while she composed her features and her ideas to receive her visitor.  Both, from long habit rather than from any cause or reason, were of a querulous cast, and her ordinary tone was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated affliction.  She was at once plaintive and voluable, and in moments of excitement her need of freeing her mind was so great that she took herself into her own confidence, and found a more sympathetic listener than when she talked to her husband.  As she now whisked about her room in her bed-gown with an activity not predicable of her age and shape, and finally plunged under the covering and drew it up to her chin with one hand while she pressed it out decorously over her person with the other, she kept up a rapid flow of lamentation and conjecture.  “I do suppose he’ll be right back with her before I’m half ready; and what the man was thinkin’ of to do such a thing anyway, I don’t know.  I don’t know as she’ll notice much, comin’ out of such a lookin’ place as that, and I don’t know as I need to care if she did.  But if the’e’s care anywhe’s around, I presume I’m the one to have it.  I presume I did take a fancy to her, and I guess I shall be glad to see how I like her now; and if he’s only told her I want some sewin’ done, I can scrape up something to let her carry home with her.  It’s well I keep my things where I can put my hand on ’em at a time like this, and I don’t believe I shall sca’e the child, as it is.  I do hope Albe’t won’t hang round half the day before he brings her; I like to have a thing ova.”