It was certain, however, that there was a great deal of sickness in the house.  One family who rented the place lost three children by fever in one summer, and it was remarkable that all three seemed to fall under the same delusion, and insisted that something or some one, coming behind them, laid upon their shoulders a cold hand.  One of them, toward the last, said that a shadow kept moving to and fro in the room, and kept the sunshine all away.  The woman who had seen the vision of the old doctor became a widow the next month, and so much sickness and death took place in the house that at last no one would live there, and it was shut up by its owner.

In due course of time the father and mother of Sophonisba and Faithful were laid in Dorchester burial-ground.  Mr. T——­ had never been a rich man by any means, and when he died there was little left for the two girls, even after the sale of the homestead.  They did not, however, consider themselves poor, but with their fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and their trade of milliner and dressmaker thought themselves very well to do in the world.  Sophonisba, the elder, was at that time a little under fifty—­an energetic, hard-working woman, with a constitution of wrought iron and bend leather, and no more under the influence of what are called “nerves” than if they had been left out of her system entirely.  If ever a woman was born into this world an old maid, it was Sophonisba T——.  Her fine name was the only romantic thing about her.  She had had more than one offer of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible damsels.  There was no hidden romance or tale of unreturned affection in Miss Sophonisba’s experience.  The simple fact was, she had never wished to be married.  Miss Faithful was five years her sister’s junior.  She had never found room in her heart for a second love since John Clark went down in the Federalist.  She had been a young and pretty girl then, and now she was a thin, silent, rather nervous little body, depending entirely upon her sister with a helpless kind of affection that was returned on Miss Sophonisba’s part by a devotion which might almost be called passionate.

“I tell you what it is, Faithful,” said Miss Sophonisba one evening, as they sat over their tea, “if they raise the rent on us here, I won’t stay.”

The sisters had lived in the house ever since the death of their mother, five years before.  Their business had prospered, and they were conveniently situated, but, for all that, Miss Sophonisba had no mind to pay additional rent.

“No?” said Faithful, inquiringly.

“That I won’t!  We pay all it’s worth now, and more too.  It ain’t the extra four shillings,” said Miss Sophonisba, rubbing her spectacles in irritation, “but I do hate to be imposed upon.”