what I was; and many a time when we’d be drivin’ through the country, and we’d pass some o’ them long-strung-out houses, don’t you know, with the kitchen next to the wood shed, and then an ahchway befoa you get to the stable, Mr. Landa he’d get out, and make an urrand, just so’s to look in at the kitchen dooa; he said it made him think of his own motha’s kitchen.  We was both brought up in the country, that’s a fact, and I guess if the truth was known we both expected to settle down and die thea, some time; but now he’s gone, and I don’t know what’ll become o’ me, and sometimes I don’t much care.  I guess if Mr. Landa’d ’a seen youa kitchen, it wouldn’t ‘a’ been so easy to git him out of it; and I do believe if he’s livin’ anywhe’ now he takes as much comfo’t in my settin’ here as what I do.  I presume I shall settle down somewhe’s before a great while, and if you could make up youa mind to let your daughta come to me for a little visit till spring, you couldn’t do a thing that ’d please Mr. Landa moa.”

Mrs. Claxon said that she would talk it over with the child’s father; and then Mrs. Lander pressed her to let her take Clementina back to the Middlemount with her for supper, if they wouldn’t let her stay the night.  After Clementina had driven away, Mrs. Claxon accused herself to her husband of being the greatest fool in the State, but he said that the carriage was one of the Middlemount rigs, and he guessed it was all right.  He could see that Clem was wild to go, and he didn’t see why she shouldn’t.

“Well, I do, then,” his wife retorted.  “We don’t know anything about the woman, or who she is.”

“I guess no harm’ll come to Clem for one night,” said Claxon, and Mrs. Claxon was forced back upon the larger question for the maintenance of her anxiety.  She asked what he was going to do about letting Clem go the whole winter with a perfect stranger; and he answered that he had not got round to that yet, and that there were a good many things to be thought of first.  He got round to see the rector before dark, and in the light of his larger horizon, was better able to orient Mrs. Lander and her motives than he had been before.

When she came back with the girl the next morning, she had thought of something in the nature of credentials.  It was the letter from her church in Boston, which she took whenever she left home, so that if she wished she might unite with the church in any place where she happened to be stopping.  It did not make a great impression upon the Klaxons, who were of no religion, though they allowed their children to go to the Episcopal church and Sunday-school, and always meant to go themselves.  They said they would like to talk the matter over with the rector, if Mrs. Lander did not object; she offered to send her carriage for him, and the rector was brought at once.