trouble began when Jacob Wheeler had commenced to pay attention
to Charlotte, the younger and prettier of two women who had both
ceased to be either very young or very pretty. Rosetta had been
bitterly opposed to the match from the first. She vowed she had
no use for Jacob Wheeler. There were not lacking malicious
people to hint that this was because the aforesaid Jacob Wheeler
had selected the wrong sister upon whom to bestow his affections.
Be that as it might, Miss Rosetta certainly continued to render
the course of Jacob Wheeler's true love exceedingly rough and
tumultuous. The end of it was that Charlotte had gone quietly
away one morning and married Jacob Wheeler without Miss Rosetta's
knowing anything about it. Miss Rosetta had never forgiven her
for it, and Charlotte had never forgiven the things Rosetta had
said to her when she and Jacob returned to the Ellis cottage.
Since then the sisters had been avowed and open foes, the only
difference being that Miss Rosetta aired her grievances publicly,
in season and out of season, while Charlotte was never heard to
mention Rosetta's name. Even the death of Jacob Wheeler, five
years after the marriage, had not healed the breach.

Miss Rosetta took out her curl-papers, packed her valise, and
caught the late afternoon train for Charlottetown, as she had
threatened. All the way there she sat rigidly upright in her
seat and held imaginary dialogues with Charlotte in her mind,
running something like this on her part:--

"No, Charlotte Wheeler, you are not going to have Jane's baby,
and you're very much mistaken if you think so. Oh, all
right--we'll see! You don't know anything about babies, even if
you are married. I do. Didn't I take William Ellis's baby, when