"Fiddlesticks' Ends! I have never had more than one of you about me at a Time; and has everything else been at a Stand-still? Have your Shop-shutters been put up, have your Customers been kept out, have you intermitted your Baking and your Milking? Pshaw! I'm nauseated with such a false Excuse. If you couldn't go, you might write; if you could not write, you might send; if you could not spare one of the Men, you might have sent a Boy for Two-pence. Let me hear by To-morrow Morning, I insist upon't, whether Mrs. _Gatty_ be alive or dead." He was quite in a Turmoil about it, and for my Part, I was glad enough to be commissioned to send; and as _Peter_ knew the House, I contrived he should go that same Afternoon, and ask for Mr. _James_, and inquire how fared Mrs. _Gatty_ and Lady _Betty_--bidding him be sure he put Lady _Betty's_ Name first, or they would think we knew no Manners. So he went, and brought back Word, with Mr. _James'_ Services, that my _Lady_ was still very ill, and still kept her Chamber, and so did Mrs. _Gatty_. I said, "Did he mean Mrs. _Gatty_ was confined to her own Chamber or to my _Lady's_? for that makes all the Difference." _Peter_ says, "Well, Ma'am, I understood him to mean she kept my _Lady's_ Chamber; but I gave you the very Words he said." So I gave them, just the same, to my _Father_. "Blockhead! Dunderhead!" exclaimed he impatiently. "Well, if she's in her Chamber, she's not in the Churchyard at any Rate--And I shall soon be able to spare you, _Patty_, to go and see how she really is." That Night _Prudence_ and I slept together, for the first Time since my Return Home. Before that, I had lain in the little Closet close to my _Father's_ Room, to be within Call. We undressed silently enough, and I noticed again the great Depression she had betrayed ever since my Return; but yet I was as quiet as she. When the Candle was put out, she crept closer to me; and though she was quiet for a While, I had an Impression she was going to say Something. At length, "_Patty_," says she,--and I could perceive her Voice was unsteady, "did you ever know what a Burthen it was to have Something on your Mind that you longed, yet feared, to tell?" "Well," said I, "I can form some Notion of the Pain it must give." "I have that Pain," says she, and fell a crying. I said, "Come, _Prue_, tell me what it is. We didn't use to have any Secrets from one another." "Nor needed to have," says she in her Tears--"All that's altered now." "Why should it be?" said I. She made no Answer. "Come, what is it?" I said. "Don't you remember saying to me, 'How fine we are!' a Day or two back," says _Prue_, "when you noted a Ruby Ring on my Finger?" "A _Mock_ Ruby, you mean! It's a Glass Ring, if ever there was one! I told you, if I wore Jewels at all, they should be real." "Yes, and I said Nothing, and I dare say you thought I was sulky, but I wasn't. People often make great Mistakes in judging others. Well, that Ring was given me by _Tom_."