Old Mrs. Meadows sat in her doorway reading a theological work called “Believers’ Buttons.”  She took the note, looked at it.  “Why, this is from John, I think; what can he have to say to me?” She put on her spectacles again, which she had taken off on the messenger first accosting her, and deliberately opened, smoothed and read the note.  It ran thus: 

“Mother, I am lonely.  Come over and stay awhile with me, if you please.

“Your dutiful son, JOHN MEADOWS”

“Here, Hannah,” cried the old woman to a neighbor’s daughter that was nearly always with her.

Hannah, a comely girl of fourteen, came running in.

“Here’s John wants me to go over to his house.  Get me the pen and ink, girl, out of the cupboard, and I’ll write him a word or two any way.—­Is there anything amiss?” said she quickly to the man.

“He came in with the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner, and he hasn’t spoke to a soul since.  That’s all I know, missus.  I think something has put him out, and he isn’t soon put out, you know, he isn’t.”

Hannah left the room, after placing the paper as she was bid.

“You will all be put out that trust to an arm of flesh, all of ye, master or man, Dick Messenger,” said the disciple of John Wesley somewhat grimly.  “Ay, and be put out of the kingdom of heaven, too, if ye don’t take heed.”

“Is that the news I’m to take back to Farnborough, missus?” said Messenger with quiet, rustic irony.

“No; I’ll write to him.”

The old woman wrote a few lines reminding Meadows that the pursuit of earthly objects could never bring any steady comfort, and telling him that she should be lost in his great house—­that it would seem quite strange to her to go into the town after so many years’ quiet—­but that if he was minded to come out and see her she would be glad to see him and glad of the opportunity to give him her advice, if he was in a better frame for listening to it than last time she offered it to him, and that was two years come Martinmas.

Then the old woman paused, next she reflected, and afterward dried her unfinished letter.  And as she began slowly to fold it up and put it in her pocket—­“Hannah,” cried she thoughtfully.

Hannah appeared in the doorway.

“I dare say—­you may fetch—­my cloak and bonnet.  Why, if the wench hasn’t got them on her arm.  What, you made up your mind that I should go, then?”

“That I did,” replied Hannah.  “Your warm shawl is in the cart, Mrs. Meadows.”

“Oh! you did, did you.  Young folks are apt to be sure and certain.  I was in two minds about it, so I don’t see how the child could be sure,” said she, dividing her remark between vacancy and the person addressed—­a grammatical privilege of old age.

“Oh! but I was sure, for that matter,” replied Hannah firmly.

“And what made the little wench so sure, I wonder?” said the old woman, now in her black bonnet and scarlet cloak.