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“Like a ride, ma’am?” said he, looking at once bewildered and compassionate.

“Thankee,” said Harriet, “we’d be much obleeged.”

After the man had lifted the old women into the wagon, and established them on the back seat, he turned around, as he drove slowly along, and gazed at them curiously.

“Seems to me you look pretty feeble to be walking far,” said he.”Where were you going?”

Harriet told him with an air of defiance.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “it is fourteen miles out. You could never walk it in the world. Well, I am going within three miles of there, and I can go on a little farther as well as not. But I don’t see – Have you been in the city?”

“I have been visitin’ my married darter in the city,” said Harriet, calmly.

Charlotte started, and swallowed convulsively.

Harriet had never told a deliberate falsehood before in her life, but this seemed to her one of the tremendous exigencies of life which justify a lie. She felt desperate. If she could not contrive to deceive him in some way, the man might turn directly around and carry Charlotte and her back to the “Home” and the white caps.

“I should not have thought your daughter would have let you start for such a walk as that,” said the man.”Is this lady your sister?She is blind, isn’t she?She does not look fit to walk a mile.”

“Yes, she’s my sister,” replied Harriet, stubbornly: “an’ she’s blind; an’ my darter didn’t want us to walk. She felt reel bad about it. But she couldn’t help it. She’s poor, and her husband’s dead, an’ she’s got four leetle children.”

Harriet recounted the hardships of her imaginary daughter with a glibness that was astonishing. Charlotte swallowed again.

“Well,” said the man, “I am glad I overtook you, for I don’t think you would ever have reached home alive.”

About six miles from the city an open buggy passed them swiftly. In it were seated the matron and one of the gentlemen in charge of the “Home.”They never thought of looking into the covered wagon – and indeed one can travel in one of tho
se vehicles, so popular in some parts of New England, with as much privacy as he could in his tomb. The two in the buggy were seriously alarmed, and anxious for the safety of the old women, who were chuckling maliciously in the wagon they soon left far behind. Harriet had watched them breathlessly until they disappeared on a curve of the road; then she whispered to Charlotte.

A little after noon the two old women crept slowly up the foot-path across the field to their old home.

“The clover is up to our knees,” said Harriet; “an’ the sorrel and the white-weed; an’ there’s lots of yaller butterflies.”

O Lord, Harriét, thar’s a chink, an’ I do believe I saw one of them yaller butterflies go past it,” cried Charlotte, trembling all over, and nodding her gray head violently.

Harriet stood on the old sunken door-step and fitted the key, which she drew triumphantly from her pocket, in the lock, while Charlotte stood waiting and shaking behind her.

Then they went in. Everything was there just as they had left it. Charlotte sank down on a chair and began to cry. Harriet hurried across to the window that looked out on the garden.

“The currants air ripe,” said she; “an‘ them pumpkins hev run all over everything.”

“O Lord, Harriét,” sobbed Charlotte, “thar is so many chinks that they air all runnin’ together!”