"You mean, do my duty and shell peas?" asked the girl somewhat doubtfully, looking at her mother's fingers and the quick stripped pea pods passing through them. "Is father poor, mother?" "Yes." "He has a good farm, he says." "Yes, but it is encumbered heavily." And Mrs. Carpenter sighed. Rotha had often heard her mother sigh so. It was a breath with a burden. "I don't know what you mean by 'encumbered.'" "It is not needful you should know, just yet." "But I should like to know, mother. Won't you tell me?" "It is heavily mortgaged. And _that_ you do not understand. Never mind. He has a great deal of money to pay out for it every year the interest on the mortgages and that keeps us poor." "Why must he pay it?" "Because the farm is pledged for the debt; and if the interest, this yearly money, were not paid, the farm itself would go." "Go? How?" "Be sold. For the money due on it." There was silence awhile, during which only the pea pods rustled and fell; then the girl asked, "What should we do then, mother, if the farm was sold?" "I do not know." The words came faint. "Does it trouble you, mother?" "It need not trouble you, Rotha. It cannot happen unless the Lord will; and that is enough. Now you may carry these pea pods out and give them to the pigs." "Mother," said Rotha as she slowly rose and laid away her book, "all you say makes me wish more than ever that I were a princess, or something." "You may be _something_," said Mrs. Carpenter laughing slightly, but with a very sweet merriment. "Now take away this basket." Rotha stooped for the basket, and then stood still, looking out of the window. Across the intervening piece of kitchen garden, rows of peas and tufts of asparagus greenery, her eye went to the road, where a buggy had just stopped. "Maybe something is going to happen now," she said. "Who is that, mother? There is somebody getting out of a wagon and tying his horse;--now he is coming in. It is 'Siah Barker, mother." Mrs. Carpenter paused to look out of the window, and then hastily throwing her peas into the pot of boiling water, went herself to the door. A young countryman met her there, with a whip in his hand. "Mornin', Mis' Carpenter. Kin you help the distressed?" "What's the matter, 'Siah?" "Shot if I know; but he's took pretty bad." "Who, pray?" "Wall, I skurce can tell that. He's an Englisher--come to our place this mornin' and axed fur a horse and wagon to carry him to Rochester; and he's got so fur,--that's two miles o' the way,--and he can't go no furder, I guess. He's took powerful bad." "Ill, is he?" "Says so. And he looks it." "Cannot go on to Rochester? "It's fifteen mile, Mis' Carpenter. I wouldn't like to be the man to drive him. He can't go another foot, he says. He was took quite sudden." "Cannot you turn about and carry him back to Medwayville?"