"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Johnson angrily, "that's the way people do, and call it keepin' peace. I despise sich ways. Why didn't he make her behave herself? Suppose there was a fuss; ef she'd found he was goin' to be boss, she'd soon give up." "I guess not, Mis' Johnson," said the other; "she had sich a temper." "As if I didn't know that! an' I know when folks give up to sich tempers they make 'em worse. Wouldn't it been better if ole man Curtis had jes' let her see from the first that he didn't care for her temper? Why, she jesso natrally drove her girls to marry; and think of poor Molly tied to that drunken, shiftless Ned Pelton, and Betsy married to a old widower with seven or eight children, and him nearly as old as her father! I tell you, Aunt Nancy, Curtis is to blame." "Well," said the old lady gently, "I went up-stairs and found Rhody looking better'n I expected, with that midget of a baby with its eyes wide open on her lap. She was glad to see me. "'O Aunt Nancy!' she cried before I got my bunnit off, 'Jim has rented the old Duncan place, and as soon as I am able we are going there to live. He is over there now, fixing up.' "'Aha!' thought I, 'that's what's up!' but I said I was glad, and that I had brought her some sponge cake and other things; an' I 'mused the baby while she et a little--a mighty little, I was sorry to see; but she went on to tell me Jim had been to the doctor about her, an' he said she needed tonics, and he sent her some, an' she was goin' to take the med'cin' an' would soon be well and strong, an' so happy! 'But, Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'baby don't grow a bit. I'm afraid he is too old-fashioned. Mother Curtis says I don't stir 'round enough to get an appetite. Do you think that's it--that baby don't get enough to make him grow because I can't eat?' She looked so weak and pitiful. "I says, 'Well, it ain't your fault; I reckon you can't make yourself eat.' "She laughed a little. 'You are such a comfort, auntie!' she says; 'but that wonderful tonic'll set me up again.' "An' so I left her an' went home, promising to be back in a day or two an' take her home with me for a little visit if she was strong enough. You'd jes' oughter to seen her face when I said that; it jes' lit up. "'Mother Curtis?' she whispered. "'Oh,' says I, 'she'll be glad to get rid of you for a while,' an' I went off plannin' how I'd see Jim and make him bring her over. But it did seem as if there was a spite to be worked out agin me, for that very evenin' it set in to rain, an' that stiffened the ole man up bad, an' for days he could not move hisself, an' I was kep' close at home for three weeks, hearin' from the neighbors every once in a while that Rhody was gainin' slowly, but the baby wasn't right somehow.