“Is he good to her?  Is he grateful?” asked Mrs. Wainwright, much impressed.

“Good! grateful!  I should say so,” said the doctor.  “She lives like Queen Victoria, rides in her carriage, dresses in black silk, has four maids to wait on her.  She lives like the first lady in the land, in her son’s house, and he treats her like a lover.  He’s a man.  He was worth all she did.  They say,” added the doctor, presently, “that sometimes the old lady tires of her splendor, sends the maids away to visit their cousins, and turns in and works for a day or two like all possessed.  She’s been seen hanging out blankets on a windy day in the back yard, with a face as happy as that of a child playing truant.”

“Poor, dear old thing,” said Mrs. Wainwright.  “Well, to go back to our girlie, she’s to be allowed to take her own way, isn’t she, and to be as energetic and work as steadily as she likes?”

“Yes, dearest, she shall, for all I’ll do or say to the contrary.  And when my ship comes in I’ll pay her back with interest for the loans she’s made me lately.”

The doctor went off to visit his patients.  His step had grown light, his face had lost its look of alert yet furtive dread.  He looked twenty years younger.  And no wonder.  He no longer had to dodge Potter at every turn, and a big package of receipted bills, endorsed and dated, lay snugly in his desk, the fear of duns exorcised thereby.  A man whose path has been impeded by the thick underbrush of debts he cannot settle, and who finds his obligations cancelled, may well walk gaily along the cleared and brightened roadway, hearing birds sing and seeing blue sky beaming above his head.

The Ten took hold of the first reading with enthusiasm.  Flags were borrowed, and blazing boughs of maple and oak, with festoons of crimson blackberry vine and armfuls of golden rod transformed the long room into a bower.  Seats were begged and borrowed, and all the cooks in town made cake with fury and pride for the great affair.  The tickets were sold without much trouble, and the girls had no end of fun in rehearsing the tableaux which were decided on as preferable in an entertainment given by the King’s Daughters, because in tableaux everybody has something to do.  Grace was to read from “Young Lucretia” and a poem by Hetta Lord Hayes Ward, a lovely poem about a certain St. Bridget who trudges up to heaven’s gate, after her toiling years, and finds St. Peter waiting to set it wide open.  The poor, modest thing was an example of Keble’s lovely stanza: 

    “Meek souls there are who little dream
    Their daily life an angel’s theme,
    Nor that the rod they bear so calm
    In heaven may prove a martyr’s palm.”

Very much astonished at her reception, she is escorted up to the serene heights by tall seraphs, who treat her with the greatest reverence.  By and by along comes a grand lady, one of Bridget’s former employers.  She just squeezes through the gate, and then,