March had not spoken openly of his love for Hetty Alling since the evening on which he first avowed it to his mother, but, in her opinion, there was nothing significant in this reserve. The Gilchrists were delicate in their dealings with one another, never asking inconvenient questions, or pushing communication beyond the voluntary stage. If May divined the drift of her brother’s affections, she did not intimate it by word or look. When the fruit of confidence was ripe it would be dropped into her lap. She _did_ note what Mrs. Gilchrist had not the opportunity of seeing—how seldom Hetty had leisure to receive March or his sister. She was getting ready the wardrobe of the twin boys, who were to go to boarding school the 1st of October. Through Hester’s talk May had learned incidentally that the Wayts employed neither dressmaker nor seamstress. “Hetty is miraculously skillful with her needle,” was Hester’s way of putting it, “and so swift that it would drive her wild to see her work done by the ‘young lady who goes out by the day.’ I work buttonholes and hem ruffles and such like, and mamma gives her all the time she can spare from baby—and other things. But our Hetty is the motor of the household machine. I don’t believe there is another like her in the world. The mold in which she was cast was broken.” She had said this in a chat held with her favorite this evening while the others were engaged with other themes outside of the window. May encouraged her to go on by remarking: “You love her as dearly as if she were really your sister, don’t you?” “‘As well!’ The love I have for mother, sisters, and brothers is a drop in the ocean compared with what I feel for Hetty! See here, Miss May!” showing her perfectly formed hands. “These were as helpless as my feet. Hetty rubbed me, bathed me, flexed the muscles for an hour every morning and an hour every night. She tempted me to eat; obliged me to take exercise; carried me up and down stairs, and sat with me in her arms out of doors until she had saved fifty dollars out of her allowance to have my chair built. Hetty educated me—made me over! She is my brain, the blood of my heart—I don’t believe I should have a soul but for Hetty!” The warm water stood in May’s eyes. But the weak voice, thrilling with excitement, reminded her of the danger of an excess of feeling upon the disjointed system. She spoke lightly: “Oh, your father would have looked out for your soul!” “_Would_ he?” The accent of intensest acrimony shocked the listener, corroborated as it was by the bitterness of scorn that wrung the small face. In a second Hester caught herself up. “They say that cobblers’ wives go barefoot. Ministers have so little time to spare for the souls of their families that their children are paganed. If it wasn’t for their wives and their wives’ sisters, the forlorn creatures would not know who made them.”