“Well, I don't know what it was,” replied Bartley, plaintively submitting to be exonerated, “but I feel perfectly used up. Oh, I suppose I shall get over it, or forget all about it, by to-morrow,” he added, with strenuous cheerfulness. “It isn't anything worth minding.” Mrs. Gaylord seemed to differ with him on this point. “Head ache any?” she asked. “It did this morning, when I first woke up,” Bartley assented. “I don't believe but what a cup of tea would be the best thing for you,” she said, critically. Bartley had instinctively practised a social art which ingratiated him with people at Equity as much as his demands for sympathy endeared him: he gave trouble in little unusual ways. He now said, “Oh, I wish you would give me a cup, Mrs. Gaylord.” “Why, yes, indeed! That's just what I was going to,” she replied. She went to the kitchen, which lay beyond another room, and reappeared with the tea directly, proud of her promptness, but having it on her conscience to explain it. “I 'most always keep the pot on the stove hearth, Sunday morning, so's to have it ready if Mr. Gaylord ever wants a cup. He's a master hand for tea, and always was. There: _I_ guess you better take it without milk. I put some sugar in the saucer, if you want any.” She dropped noiselessly upon her feather cushion again, and Bartley, who had risen to receive the tea from her, remained standing while he drank it. “That does seem to go to the spot,” he said, as he sipped it, thoughtfully observant of its effect upon his disagreeable feelings. “I wish I had you to take care of me, Mrs. Gaylord, and keep me from making a fool of myself,” he added, when he had drained the cup. “No, no!” he cried, at her offering to take it from him. “I'll set it down. I know it will fret you to have it in here, and I'll carry it out into the kitchen.” He did so before she could prevent him, and came back, touching his mustache with his handkerchief. “I declare, Mrs. Gaylord, I should love to live in a kitchen like that.” “I guess you wouldn't if you had to,” said Mrs. Gaylord, flattered into a smile. “Marcia, she likes to sit out there, she says, better than anywheres in the house. But I always tell her it's because she was there so much when she was little. I don't see as she seems over-anxious to do anything there _but_ sit, I tell her. Not but what she knows how well enough. Mr. Gaylord, too, he's great for being round in the kitchen. If he gets up in the night, when he has his waking spells, he had rather take his lamp out there, if there's a fire left, and read, any time, than what he would in the parlor. Well, we used to sit there together a good deal when we were young, and he got the habit of it. There's everything in habit,” she added, thoughtfully. “Marcia, she's got quite in the way, lately, of going to the Methodist church.” “Yes, I've seen her there. You know I board round at the different churches, as the schoolmaster used to at the houses in the old times.”