Let us peep into the doctor's sitting room; the air of this room is close and stifled, for the windows must be tightly closed, lest some audacious fly should make his mark on the old lady's immaculate walls. A centre table stands in the middle of the floor, with a copy of "The Religious Pilot," last year's Almanac, A Directory, and "The remarkable Escape of Eliza Cook, who was partially scalped by the Indians." On one side of the room hangs a piece of framed needle-work, by the virgin fingers of the old lady, representing an unhappy female, weeping over a very high and very perpendicular tombstone, which is hieroglyphiced over with untranslateable characters in red worsted, while a few herbs, not mentioned by botanists, are struggling for existence at its base. A friendly willow-tree, of a most extraordinary shade of blue green, droops in sympathy over the afflicted female, while a nondescript looking bird, resembling a dropsical bull-frog, suspends his song and one leg, in the foreground. It was principally to preserve this chef-d'oeuvre of art, that the windows were hermetically sealed to the entrance of vagrant flies. The old doctor, with his spectacles awry and his hands drooping listlessly at his side, snored from the depths of his arm-chair, while opposite him the old lady, peering out from behind a very stiffly-starched cap border, was "seaming," "widening," and "narrowing," with a precision and perseverance most painful to witness. Outside, the bee hummed, the robin twittered, the shining leaves of the village trees danced and whispered to the shifting clouds; the free, glad breeze swept the tall meadow-grass, and the village children, as free and fetterless, danced and shouted at their sports; but there sat little Katy, with her hands crossed in her lap, as she _had_ sat for many an hour, listening to the never-ceasing click of her grandmother's needles, and the sonorous breathings of the doctor's rubicund nose. Sometimes she moved uneasily in her chair, but the old lady's uplifted finger would immediately remind her that "little girls must be seen and not heard." It was a great thing for Katy when a mouse scratched on the wainscot, or her grandmother's ball rolled out of her lap, giving her a chance to stretch her little cramped limbs. And now the village bell began to toll, with a low, booming, funereal sound, sending a cold shudder through the child's nervous and excited frame. What if _her_ mother should die way off in the city? What if she should _always_ live in this terrible way at her grandmother's? with nobody to love her, or kiss her, or pat her little head kindly, and say, "Katy, dear;" and again the bell boomed out its mournful sound, and little Katy, unable longer to bear the torturing thoughts it called up, sobbed aloud. It was all in vain, that the frowning old lady held up her warning finger; the flood-gates were opened, and Katy could not have stopped her tears had her life depended on it.