"There's weakness and infirmity coming on," said she, "but I don't mind it. This world isn't such a paradise, at the best, that one would want to stay in it forever. And there's one comfort, I shall leave nobody behind to bewail me when I'm gone." "Ah! Miss Thusa, how unjust you are. _I_ shall bewail you; and, as for Helen, I do believe the sweet, tender-hearted soul would cry her eyes out. Even the lovely, blind Alice would weep for your loss. And Mittie--but it seems to me you are not quite kind to Mittie. I should think you had too much magnanimity to remember the idle pranks of childhood against any one. Why, see what a handsome, glorious looking girl she is now." Mittie turned haughtily away, and stepped out on the mossy door-stone. All her early scorn and hatred of Miss Thusa revived with even added force. Clinton followed her, but lingered on the threshold for Louis, whose hand the ancient sibyl grasped with a cordial farewell pressure. "Mittie and I never were friends, and never can be," said she, "but I wish her no harm. I wish her better luck than I think is in her path now. As for yourself, if you should get into trouble, and not want to vex those that are kin, you can come to me, and if you don't despise my counsel and assistance, perhaps it may do you good. I have a legend that I've been storing up for your ears, too, and one of these days I should like to tell it to you. But," lowering her voice to a whisper, "leave that long-haired, smooth-tongued gentleman behind." "Was I not right," said Mittie, when they had passed the stile, and could no longer discern the ancestral figure of Miss Thusa in the door of her lonely dwelling, "in saying that she is a very rude, disagreeable person? She is so vindictive, too. She never could forgive me, because when a little child I cared not to listen to her terrible tales of ghosts and monsters. Helen believed every word she uttered, till she became the most superstitious, fearful creature in the world." "You should add, the sweetest, dearest, best," interrupted Louis, "unless we except the angelic blind maiden." "I should think if you had any affection for me, Louis," said Mittie, turning pale, as his praises of Helen fell on Clinton's ear, "you would resent the rudeness and impertinence to which you have just exposed me. What must your friend think of me? Was it to lower me in his opinion that you carried him to her hovel, and drew forth her spiteful and bitter remarks?" "Do you think it possible that _she_ could alter my opinion of _you_?" said Clinton, in a low, earnest tone. "If any thing could have exalted it, it would be the dignity and forbearance with which you bore her insinuations, and defeated her malice."