And so the day was appointed, and Bell and Mattie were summoned again from Morrisville, whither the latter had gone during the children’s illness. Judge Verner was lonely with both of his daughters absent, and as of the two he was most accustomed to Bell, he would have been quite content with having her back again if she had not told him how Jessie had turned nurse to Squire Russell’s children, and was consequently in danger of taking the disease. This roused him, and in a characteristic letter to Jessie he bade her “not make a fool of herself any longer by tending children with canker-rash and feeding them with sweetened water, but to pack up her traps and come home.” To this the saucy Jessie replied that “she should not come home till she was ready; that the Judge could shut up, and what he called sweetened water was quite as strong as the medicine which once cured his colic so soon.” Then, in the coaxing tone the Judge could never resist, she added, “You know I’m just in fun, father, when I talk like that, but really I must stay till after Dora is married, and you must let me, that’s a dear, good old soul,” and so the “good old soul” was cajoled into writing that Jessie might stay, adding in postscript, “Bell tells me you say all sorts of extravagant things about that widower, and this is well enough as long as they mean nothing, but for thunder’s sake don’t go to offering yourself to him in a streak of pity. A nice wife you would make for a widower with six children,—you who don’t know how to darn a pair of stockings, nor make a bed so that the one who sleeps the back side won’t roll out of the front. Mind, now, don’t be a fool.” “I wonder what put that idea into father’s head,” Jessie said, as she read the letter. “I would not have Squire Russell, let alone offering myself to him. And I do know how to darn socks. Any way, I can pull the holes together, which is just as well as to put in a ball and peek and poke and weave back and forth, and make lacework of it just as Bell does. It’s a real old-maidish trick, and I won’t be an old maid anyhow, if I have to marry Squire Russell,” and crushing the letter into her pocket Jessie went dancing down the stairs, whistling softly for fear of disturbing the sick children.