Mother Carey, not wishing to make any larger number of persons uncomfortable than necessary, had asked Julia not to come to them until after the house in Beulah had been put to rights; but the Fergusons went abroad rather unexpectedly, and Mr. Ferguson tore Julia from the arms of Gladys and put her on the train with very little formality.  Her meeting Cousin Ann on the way was merely one of those unpleasant coincidences with which life is filled, although it is hardly possible, usually, for two such disagreeable persons to be on the same small spot at the same precise moment.

On the third morning after the Careys’ arrival, however, matters assumed a more hopeful attitude, for Cousin Ann became discontented with Beulah.  The weather had turned cold, and the fireplaces, so long unused, were uniformly smoky.  Cousin Ann’s stomach, always delicate, turned from tinned meats, eggs three times a day, and soda biscuits made by Bill Harmon’s wife; likewise did it turn from nuts, apples, oranges, and bananas, on which the children thrived; so she went to the so-called hotel for her meals.  Her remarks to the landlady after two dinners and one supper were of a character not to be endured by any outspoken, free-born New England woman.

“I keep a hotel, and I’ll give you your meals for twenty-five cents apiece so long as you eat what’s set before you and hold your tongue,” was the irate Mrs. Buck’s ultimatum.  “I’ll feed you,” she continued passionately, “because it’s my business to put up and take in anything that’s respectable; but I won’t take none o’ your sass!”

Well, Cousin Ann’s temper was up, too, by this time, and she declined on her part to take any of the landlady’s “sass”; so they parted, rather to Mrs. Carey’s embarrassment, as she did not wish to make enemies at the outset.  That night Cousin Ann, still smarting under the memory of Mrs. Buck’s snapping eyes, high color, and unbridled tongue, complained after supper that her bedstead rocked whenever she moved, and asked Gilbert if he could readjust it in some way, so that it should be as stationary as beds usually are in a normal state.

He took his tool basket and went upstairs obediently, spending fifteen or twenty minutes with the much-criticised article of furniture, which he suspected of rocking merely because it couldn’t bear Cousin Ann.  This idea so delighted Nancy that she was obliged to retire from Gilbert’s proximity, lest the family should observe her mirth and Gilbert’s and impute undue importance to it.

“I’ve done everything to the bedstead I can think of,” Gilbert said, on coming downstairs.  “You can see how it works to-night, Cousin Ann!”

As a matter of fact it did work, instead of remaining in perfect quiet as a well-bred bedstead should.  When the family was sound asleep at midnight a loud crash was heard, and Cousin Ann, throwing open the door of her room, speedily informed everybody in the house that her bed had come down with her, giving her nerves a shock from which they probably would never recover.