“I can’t pay it now,” said he promptly to the boy who brought it.  “Tell Mr. Holton I will see him in a day or two.”

The boy took the paper with an insolent grin, for he had heard the fast circulating rumor, “that one of the big bugs was about to smash up;” and now, eager to confirm the report, he ran swiftly back to his employer, who muttered, “Just as I expected.  I’ll draw on him for what I lent him, and that’ll tell the story.  My daughters can’t afford to wear such things, and I’m not going to furnish money for his.”

Of all this Rose did not dream, for in her estimation there was no end to her father’s wealth, and the possibility of his failing had never entered her mind.  Henry indeed had once hinted it to her on the occasion of her asking him “how he could fancy Ella Campbell enough to marry her.”

“I’m not marrying her, but her money” was his prompt answer; “and I assure you, young lady, we are more in need of that article than you imagine.”

Rose paid no attention to this speech, and when she found that her favorite Sarah was not to accompany her, she almost wept herself into convulsions, declaring that her father, to whom the mother imputed the blame, was cruel and hard-hearted, and that if it was Jenny instead of herself who was sick, she guessed “she’d have forty waiting-maids if she wanted them.”

“I should like to know who is to take care of me?” said she.  “Jenny isn’t going, and grandma would think it an unpardonable extravagance to hire a servant.  I will not go, and that ends it!  If you want to be rid of me, I can die fast enough here.”

Mrs. Lincoln had nothing to say, for she well knew she had trained her daughter to despise every thing pertaining to the old brown house, once her childhood home, and where even now the kind-hearted grandmother was busy in preparing for the reception of the invalid.  From morning until night did the little active form of Grandma Howland flit from room to room, washing windows which needed no washing, dusting tables on which no dust was lying, and doing a thousand things which she thought would add to the comfort of Rose.  On one room in particular did the good old lady bestow more than usual care.  ’Twas the “spare chamber,” at whose windows Rose, when a little girl, had stood for hours, watching the thin, blue mist and fleecy clouds, as they floated around the tall green mountains, which at no great distance seemed to tower upward, and upward, until their tops were lost in the sky above.  At the foot of the mountain and nearer Glenwood, was a small sheet of water which now in the spring time was plainly discernible from the windows of Rose’s chamber, and with careful forethought Mrs. Howland arranged the bed so that the sick girl could look out upon the tiny lake and the mountains beyond.  Snowy white, and fragrant with the leaves of rose and geranium which had been pressed within their folds, were the sheets which covered the bed, the last Rose Lincoln would ever rest upon.  Soft and downy were the pillows, and the patchwork quilt, Rose’s particular aversion, was removed, and its place supplied by one of more modern make.