For a minute Mrs. Stubbs was too thoroughly astounded to speak; then she subsided into weak fits of laughter, such as told Sarah she had made a terrible mistake somehow. "A very old one to sweep out the yard with!" Mrs. Stubbs cried in gasps. "Oh, dear, dear! Why, child, you’re just like a little ’eathen. A broom is a carriage, a close carriage, something like a four-wheel cab, only better. Oh, dear, dear! and we keep three, do we? Oh, _what_ a joke to tell Stubbs!" "Miss Sarah knows," struck in the old nurse, with some indignation; "the doctor’s carriage is what Mrs. Stubbs calls a broom, dearie." Sarah turned her crimson face from one to the other. "But Father always called that kind of carriage a _bro_-am," she emphasized, "and I didn’t know you meant the same, Aunt." "Well, never mind, my dear; I shouldn’t ’ave laughed at you," returned Mrs. Stubbs, stirring her tea again with fat complaisance. "Little folks can’t be expected to know everything, though there are some as does expect it, and most unreasonable it is of ’em. Only, Sarah, it’s more stylish to say broom, so try to think of it, there’s a good girl." "I’ll try," said Sarah, hoping that she had somewhat retrieved her character by knowing what kind of carriage her aunt meant by a "broom." Then Mrs. Stubbs had another cup of tea, which she seemed to enjoy particularly. "And you would like to go upstairs, mum?" said the nurse, as she set the cup down. "Why, yes, nurse, it’s my duty to go, and I’m not one as is ever backward in doing ’er duty," Mrs. Stubbs replied, upheaving herself from the somewhat uncertain depths of the big chair, the only easy chair in the house. So the two women went up above together to visit that something which Sarah had not seen since the moment of death. She sat just where they left her--a way she had, for Sarah was a very quiet child--wondering how life would be with this new-found aunt of hers. She was very kind, Sarah decided, and would be very good to her, she knew; and yet--yet--there was something about her from which she shrank instinctively--something she knew would have offended her father beyond everything. Poor Sarah! At that moment Mrs. Stubbs was standing beside all that was left of him that had loved her so dearly during all the years of her short life. "Pore thing!" she was saying. "Pore thing! We weren’t good friends, nurse, but we must not think of that now; and I’ll be a mother to his little girl just as if there’d never been a cloud between us. Pore thing, only thirty-six! Ah, well, pore thing; but he makes a pretty corpse!" [Illustration: "Pore thing!" she was saying. "Pore thing!"] CHAPTER III SARAH’S FUTURE IS ARRANGED Two days later Sarah’s father was buried, laid quietly away in a pretty little churchyard two miles outside the town, beside the young wife who had died nine years before.