"Love!" answered Miss Chatterwits, solemnly. "She died of love."
"Love!" echoed Kate. "Shakespeare says nobody ever died of love." Then, with an afterthought: "Perhaps he was thinking only of men. But why do you think Miss Timpkins died of love? She didn't look as foolish as that."
"Well,"—and Miss Chatterwits shook her head in joyful significance, for it always pleased her to have news of this kind to tell,—"I guess if Hiram Bradstreet hadn't gone and left her she'd be alive to-day."
"What nonsense!" said Kate.
"Oh, you can smile, but I've sewed at her house by the week running, and he'd come sometimes two afternoons together to ask her to go to walk somewhere; and even if she was in the middle of trying on she'd drop everything and run, looking as pleased as could be."
"Any one would look pleased to escape a trying on."
"Oh, you can make light of it. But once when I said I guessed I'd be fitting a wedding dress soon, she colored right up, and said she, 'Oh, we're only friends.'"
"That's nothing."
"Perhaps it was nothing when Mary Timpkins began to fade the very minute she heard Hiram Bradstreet was engaged to a girl he met on the steamer last summer. Why did he go to Europe anyway?"