CHAPTER XII.
MISS WAX AT HOME
Miss Bethia Wax was at work one afternoon, bending over her little round table, busily plaiting a hair chain, when she heard her front door open. She looked up in some disturbance, for Phœbe, the little maid, was out, and there were few visitors, since Mrs. Stedman died, with whom she was on "run-in" terms: her disturbance was not lessened when the billowy form of Mrs. Malvina Weight appeared in the doorway.
"Good afternoon, Malvina," said Miss Wax, rather coldly. "I heard no knock; I trust you have not been kept waiting. My domestic is out."
"Yes, I see her go past the house," said the visitor, "and I thought I'd jest make a run-in. How are you feelin', Bethia? You're lookin' re'l poorly. I noticed it in meetin' last Sabbath. I said to myself, 'That woman is goin' jest the way all her fam'ly has, and she the last of 'em. As a friend of the fam'ly,' I said, 'it's my dooty to warn her'; and so I do."
Mrs. Weight sat down, and fanned herself with a small and rather dingy pocket-handkerchief.
"I am much obliged to you," said Miss Bethia. "I am in my usual health, Malvina, though I am never very robust. I was always delicate, as you may say, but yet I don't know but I have held my own with others of my age. Flesh isn't always a sign of health," she added, not without a touch of gentle malice.
"I expect I am aware of that!" cried Mrs. Weight. "I expect there's few knows the frailness that comes with layin' on flesh. What I suffer nights is beyond the power of tongue to tell. But all the more it behoves me, as the widder of a sainted man and deacon of this parish, to do my dooty by others; and I ask you, Bethia Wax, if you are doctorin' any."
"I am not," said Miss Bethia, dryly.