"What have I to sober me, with all these happy faces around, I should like to know?" was the hearty retort. "I am having a better time every day, and mean to go on so ad infinitum. You're a good one to talk about sobering down, when you laugh more than any of these youngsters."
"Well," said his wife, her substantial form quivering with merriment, "it's because you make me."
During the meal Edith had time to observe the young ladies more closely. They were fine-looking, and one or two of them really beautiful. Two of them were in early girlhood yet, and there was not a vestige of the vanity and affectation often seen in those of their position. They evidently had wide diversities of character, and faults, but there were the simplicity and sincerity about them which make the difference between a chaste piece of marble and a painted block of wood. She saw about her a house as rich and costly in its appointments as her own old home had been, but it was not so crowded or pronounced in its furnishing and decoration. There were fewer pictures, but finer ones; and in all matters of art, French taste was not prominent, as had been the case in her home.
The next day she sat by unconscious Zell as long as was permitted, and wrote fully to Laura.
The dark-eyed girl that seemed dying the day before was gone.
"Did she die?" she asked of an attendant.
"Yes."
"What did they do with her?"
"Buried her in Potter's Field."
Edith shuddered. "It would have been Zell's end," she thought, "if I hadn't found her, and she had died here alone."