is just like spring weather, rainin' one hour and shinin' the next,
and it's the Lord's great mercy they be; if they begun to be feelin'
so early, there wouldn't be nothin' left to grow up. So pretty quick
Miss Perrit knocked, and I let her in. We hadn't got no spare room in
that house; there was the kitchen in front, and mother's bed-room, and
the buttery, and the little back-space opened out on't behind. Mother
was in the bed-room; so, while I called her, Miss Perrit set down in
the splint rockin'-chair that creaked awfully, and went to rockin'
back and forth, and sighin', till mother come in. "Good-day, Miss
Langdon!" says she, with a kind of a snuffle, "how _dew_ you dew? I
thought I'd come and see how you kep' up under this here affliction. I
rec'lect very well how I felt when husband died. It's a dreadful thing
to be left a widder in a hard world;--don't you find it out by this?"

I guess mother felt quite as bad as ever Miss Perrit did, for
everybody knew old Perrit treated his wife like a dumb brute while he
was alive, and died drunk; but she didn't say nothin'. I see her give
a kind of a swaller, and then she spoke up bright and strong.

"I don't think it is a hard world, Miss Perrit. I find folks kind and
helpful, beyond what I'd any right to look for. I try not to think
about my husband, any more than I can help, because I couldn't work,
if I did, and I've got to work. It's most helpful to think the Lord
made special promises to widows, and when I remember Him I a'n't
afeard."

Miss Perrit stopped rockin' a minute, and then she begun to creak the
chair and blow her nose again, and she said,--

"Well, I'm sure it's a great mercy to see anybody rise above their