"That’s just what I come to tell you," Mrs. Slawson announced with a breath of relief. "Thanks be! ’twas my girl, Cora, found the letters, an’ she brought’m home to me. Not a soul besides us two has laid eyes on’m. Cora don’t know any more than the angels above, that the one wrote’m ain’t dead an’ gone, with a antapsie held over her remains, this many a year. So, for all I see, your troubles are over, you poor child, an’ you can lay your head on your pilla, an’ sleep sound this night, if the heat, which it certaintly _is_ prosteratin’, don’t pervent. Here’s the letters." Katherine smiled faintly as she took the little packet. "If I may make so bold, did you mean to be givin’ the letters to Dr. Ballard?" Martha inquired, after a thoughtful pause. "I own up to you, I ain’t been so fussy as not to read the name on the envelopes." Miss Crewe winced. "Of course. That was right. No, I hadn’t planned to give him the letters. At first I thought I would, but then I was afraid I might be obliged to tell him how I came to have them, and—I’m a coward. I couldn’t bear to risk it. Do you think it’s my duty to tell Dr. Ballard, Mrs. Slawson? Tell me what you think I ought to do." "When a body sets out to tell another body what she’d ought to do, he better be careful," replied Martha gravely. "You never know what you’re up against. For instance, if you’re tellin’ a fella _love his neighbor like himself_, that’s all right, only you wouldn’t be countin’ on his bein’ one o’ the kind thinks he’s a little tin god on wheels. Bein’ as he was that sort, you’d be tellin’ ’m make a graven image of his neighbor, which he’d be constantly fallin’ down before’m, an’ worshippin’ ’m, like a heathen idol. You can take it from me, tellin’ people what they’d ought to do is a delicate job—too fine for the likes of Martha Slawson. But I’d just as liefs tell you what you hadn’t ought to do, one o’ which is, lie awake grievin’ over spilled milk that’s past an’ gone. You mustn’t lug your mistakes along with you, every place you go, like they was a basket o’ dirty clo’es. Now lots besides laundryesses has dirty clo’es to wash, believe me. But if you pack’m up respectable in nice, clean wrappin’ paper, with a stout string, or a decent telescope bag, nobody’ll be the wiser, an’ your neighbors won’t objec’ sittin’ beside you in the cars. It’s when you force your dirty clo’es under the noses of the other passengers, an’ make’m uncomfortable, they’ve a kick comin’. No, if I was you (beggin’ your pardon for the liberty) I wouldn’t tell Dr. Ballard a thing ’twouldn’t be a pleasure to’m to hear. I worked for a lady, Mrs. Sherman, an’ she used ta wait to do things for, what she called—now, do you believe me, I can’t remember the name of it! It was some kind o’ _moment_. She talked about it frequent. The—the—sy——" Martha racked her brains laboriously. "Could it possibly have been the psychological moment?" suggested Miss Crewe.