“You don’t tell me your name, but I make it that you are Adam Lawton’s daughter, whom Keith has been expecting and worrying about these ten days past. She told me about your father’s money loss and shock, and how he was coming back home; and I’ve been real interested to hear, because you see, dearie, Adam and I went to school together fifty odd years ago, and to the day he left we were always a tie in spelling matches, and now here we are again, like as not matched together as cripples. Tell me all about him, dear, if it don’t hurt you. I’ve found, these eight years since I’ve had my discipline, that exchanging experiences with others likely situated is apt to make one credit a lot of things to the mercy side of the record that would never have been set down, if we hadn’t been brought face to face with other folks’ misery, and so forced to take count of stock, so to speak. And please, before we begin and have a comfortable chat, give Tatters a sugar cooky out of the drawer there (I never before set eyes on a dog so fond of sweet cake,—his mouth is fairly watering),—no, not that little drawer, the peppermints and maple candy are in there, though you might like a bit of that to nibble on,—the second drawer;” and Brooke, after giving the expectant dog his cake, drew still closer to the wheel-chair, and, such was the spell of single-hearted sympathy, quite as a matter of course she told Mrs. Fenton, naturally and frankly, of both her hopes and fears, ending with her desire to get Mrs. Peck to “accommodate” until she should have learned to manage alone. “You dear child!” exclaimed the lame woman, laying her work-hardened hand on Brooke’s soft, shapely one as she ended, and looking at her through the reminiscent tears that would gather on her lashes, “I take it a special thought of Providence, your coming to me, for who has had to learn, more than I, how to keep housework in hand?—and as to Mrs. Peck, she will be here to-night, as Enoch, being Deacon, must sleep over at Gordon, where the Con-Association meets. “Listen, and I’ll tell you of my trouble quickly as may be, because what’s over and gone best not be dug too deep, except for the planting of future seeds of grace. Eight years ago this winter I was down at my daughter’s house in Gilead (she being the only one of six left me outside God’s Acre), tending her first-born. All around the well was laid with great cobbles, I slipped, and having a heavy pail in hand could not save myself, and hurt my spine, and it paralyzed my legs.