"That will never do, Aaron: one dead, and one sick in the house, and only one other."
"Of course it will not, Sophie,--I will go and stay to-night," said I.
"You, Anna? What do you know of taking care of sick people?"
"I? Why, here, let me take this,"--and I picked up Miss Nightingale's new thoughts thereon. "Thus armed and fortified, do you think they'll ask other reference of their nurse?"
"It's better for her than going up to stay in the tower; and they are in need, though they won't say it. Let it be, Sophie."
And so my second night in March came on. A neighbor's boy walked the way with me, and left me at the door.
"I guess you'll repent your job," he said, as I bade him good-night.
"Mr. Axtell will not send me back alone," I thought; and I waited just a little, that my escort might get beyond call before I knocked.
It was a solemn, great house under whose entrance-porch I stood. Generation after generation might have come, stayed, and gone, like the last soul: here last night,--to-night, oh! where?
I looked up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked then, a timid, tremulous knock,--for last night's fear was creeping over me. The noise startled a dog; he came bounding around the corner with a sharp, quick bark.