"The other cart was our business, though; how do you know, mother? It has stopped here, and the man is taking the thing off." Mrs. Cord came to the window to look, and then went down stairs. Rotha, seeing that the object of her interest, whatever it were, had disappeared within doors, presently followed her. In the little bit of a hall below stood a large something which completely filled it up; and on one side and on the other, Mrs. Marble and Mrs. Cord were taking off the wrappings in which it was enfolded. "Well, I declare!" said the former, when they had done. "Aint that elegant!" "Just like him," said Mrs. Cord. "I guessed this was coming, or something like it." "What is it?" asked Rotha. "How much does a thing like that cost, now?" Mrs. Marble went on. "Oh see the dust on it! There's a half bushel or less. Here--wait till I get my brush.--How is it ever to go up stairs? that's what I'm lookin' at." Help had to be called in; and meantime Rotha rushed up stairs and informed her mother that a chair was come for her that was like nothing she had ever seen in her life; "soft all over," as Rotha expressed it; "back and sides and all soft as a pillow, and yet harder than a pillow; like as if it were on springs everywhere;" which was no doubt the truth of the case. "It's like getting into a nest, mother; I sat down in it; there's no hard place anywhere; there's no wood to it, that you can see." When a little later the chair made its appearance, and Mrs. Carpenter sank down into its springy depths, it is a pity that Mr. Digby could not have heard the low long-drawn 'Oh!--' of satisfaction and relief and wonder together, which came from her lips. Rotha stood and looked at her. Mrs. Carpenter was resting, in a very abandonment of rest; but in the abandonment of the moment shewing, as she did not use to shew it, the great enervation and prostration of her system. Her head, leaning back on the soft support it found, her hands laid exhaustedly on one side and on the other, the motionless pose of her whole person, struck Rotha with some strange new consciousness. "Is it good?" she asked shortly. "Very!" The word was almost a sigh. "What makes you so weak to-day?" "I am not weaker than usual." "You don't always look like that." "She's never had anything like that to rest in before," Mrs. Cord suggested. "A bed aint like one o' them chairs, for supportin' one everywhere alike. You let her rest, Rotha. Will you have an oyster, dear?" Rotha sat down at the corner of the fireplace and stared at her mother; taking the oyster, and yet not relinquishing that air of helpless lassitude. She was not sewing either; and had not been sewing, Rotha remembered, except by snatches, for several days past. Rotha sat and gazed at her, an anxious shadow falling upon her features.