And now would anybody _believe_ that this woman had only then come out of the Coneys' house--where she had been with the same tale and request, and had received nearly the same relief? We never saw or heard of her again. The note did not reach Mr. Carden; no such patient applied to the infirmary. She was a clever impostor; and we got to think that the cheek had only been rubbed up with a little blistering-salve. Many another similar thing I could tell of--and every one of them true. So you must not wonder at Mrs. Coney's unwillingness to interfere with this latest edition in the tramp line. But she had given her promise: perhaps, as Jane put it, she could not do otherwise. And on the morning after the wedding she went over to Timberdale. I was sliding in the Ravine--for there was ice still in that covered spot, though the frost had nearly disappeared elsewhere--when I saw Mrs. Coney come down the zigzag by the help of her umbrella, and her everyday brown silk gown on. "Are you here, Johnny! Shall I be able to get along?" "If I help you, you will, Mrs. Coney." "Take care. I had no idea it would be slippery here. But it is a long way round to walk by the road, and the master has taken out the pony-chaise." "What wind is blowing you to Timberdale to-day?" "An errand that I'm not at all pleased to go upon, Johnny; only Jane made a fuss about it before leaving yesterday. If I told the master he would be in a fine way. I am going to see the woman that you boys found in the shed." "I fancied Jane seemed to think a good deal about her." "Jane did think a good deal about her," returned Mrs. Coney. "She has not had the experience of this sort of people that I have, Johnny; and girls' sympathies are so easily aroused." "There was a romance about it, you see." "Romance, indeed!" wrathfully cried Mrs. Coney. "That's what leads girls' heads away: I wish they'd think of good plain sense instead. It was nothing but romance that led poor Lucy Ashton to marry that awful man, Bird." "Why does Lucy not leave him?" "Ah! it's easier to talk about leaving a man than to do it, once he's your husband. You don't understand it yet, Johnny." "And shall not, I suppose, until I am married myself. But Lucy has never talked of leaving Bird." "She won't leave him. Robert has offered her---- Goodness me, Johnny, don't hurry along like that! It's nothing but ice here. If I were to get a tumble, I might be lamed for life." "Nonsense, Mrs. Coney! It would be only a Christmas gambol." "It's all very well to laugh, Johnny. Christmas gambols mean fun to you young fellows with your supple limbs; but to us fifty-year-old people they may be something else. I wish I had tied some list round my boots." We left the ice in the Ravine, and she came up the zigzag path easily to the smooth road. I offered to take the umbrella.