Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of perfect teeth.
"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up and looked prettier yet.
"Why, I will not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had half forgotten:—
"Brickfield Farms, (near Tillington), Maine.
"Dear Miss Euphrasia,—I have not written to you since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come. Isn't it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through the Glen.
"Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia, she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate, we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved about so much; and in all the places where we have been before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was too bracing. At Crawford's it was lovely, but the bill was fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother for all summer.
"I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has grown worse since. I can't help being afraid mother has been dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there; a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to mother's room, and gave her all the little chat of the place,—I'm afraid I don't amuse mother myself as much as I ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when you've seen more than enough of them yourself,—and she used to take her out to drive nearly every day.
"Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron touched was sure to double.' She meant money; but I thought of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has managed to double them. He went to New York two or three times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the head of a company that had bought up all the land along the route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it! She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so providential that she had met her here just now; and she was always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.'
"Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said; 'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land doesn't sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come from.
"I am saving all I can here, for the winter must cost. You would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs. Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't feel as if that were quite right,—or comfortable, at least; but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be here all through October.