It was the monthly washing day. It had been the day of the monthly wash when Pamela first came to Folly Corner. She thought of that as she threw back the window and heard the rasping, spasmodic sound of the brush. Nettie came up. Between them they took off Gainah’s clothes, divested her of her many flannel packings. Then Pamela went and looked for a nightgown. She opened all Gainah’s boxes and drawers in the search. She wanted a fairly smart nightgown--for the doctor. She rejected those of daily wear--coarse, plain things which any self-respecting housemaid would disdain--narrow things, like bolster-cases with the bottoms out. She found, at last, a parcel sewn in linen. On it was pinned a paper with the words, written in an uncertain, illiterate hand: “For my laying out.” She hesitated--for sentimental reasons. Then--for practical reasons, and the practical was usually uppermost with her when it came to other people’s affairs--she unpinned the parcel. Woman’s pity for another woman touched her heart as she flipped the carefully-made nightgown, of fair, thin stuff, over her arm. “Poor thing!” she said pitifully, and hesitated once more. Then she said brusquely to herself: “Well, at the worst, if she dies, it can be washed, and she can be buried in it as she wished.” She shut the drawer, it was a bottom drawer, with her foot. Gainah’s quilts, the blue one still unfinished, were folded carefully away. When she went back she found the cook and washerwoman standing by the bed. The former had brought clean sheets, the latter was standing stolidly, her crinkled hands on her hips. She sent them all away and finished Gainah’s toilet herself. She fancied that the helpless figure shrank from the touch of her hands; fancied that the eyes tried eloquently and quite in vain to say things which the lips could not. When the bed was made and Gainah was stretched straight and stiff and robed in snow-white linen of the very finest, Pamela tidied the room. She picked up the old woman’s garments with a “finicky,” fine air of distaste. She twisted together strips of flannel and rolled up stockings which had been frugally re-footed. Last of all she plunged her hand into the pocket of the dim blue gown and brought out the heavy bunch of housekeeping keys. The clinking sound they made roused Gainah. She tried piteously to move in the bed. CHAPTER XXII. “THAT head-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young wives have a family too fast.” Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box, apportioning the different articles according to her mind.