"One day there come on snow and sleet, but for all that she stayed aloft, just as though the sun had been a-shinin'; and at last, when the dusk had gathered so that she couldn't see no longer, she come down with a gret heap o' wet things, in her arms, and all of a shiver.
"Her hand shook as she sot down to bind shoes,—she had took to bindin' of shoes some them times, not bein' so strong as she used to be for the washin'; but arter a while she fell of a tremble all over. 'It's no use,' says she, 'I ain't good for nothin' no more,' and she put away the bindin' and cowered close over the ashes.
"I wanted to lay on a big stick, but she said no, she'd go to bed, and get warm there; but she didn't get warm, not even when I had piled all the things I could rake and scrape over the bed-quilt, for I could see them tremblin' together like a heap o' dry leaves.
"I went to the lady with the painted door, and she promised to come in and see my mother early in the mornin'; but in the mornin', when I went agin, she said she had so many corsets to fit that it wa' n't possible,—that I must tell my mother she sent a great deal o' love, and hoped she'd be better very soon.
"I didn't go arter her no more, and all that day and the next my poor mother lay, now a-burnin' and now a-freezin', but by and by she got better, and sot up in bed some, havin' my little chair agin her back; and so she finished bindin' o' the shoes, and I carried on 'em home, she a-chargin' me twenty times afore I sot out to take care and not lose the money I got for bindin' on 'em. 'And don't forget to stop at the store,' she said, 'and buy me a quarter o' tea, as you come back, Johnny.'
"But, after all, I went home without the tea, or the money either.
"In the fust place, the shoemaker said my mother had disappinted him in not sendin' the work home when she promised; and when I said she was sick, he answered that that wa 'n't his look-out; and then he eyed the work sharply, sayin', at last, that he couldn't pay for them sort o' stitches, and he wouldn't give out no more bindin' neither, and that I might go with a hop, skip, and jump, and tell my mother so; and he waved his hand, with a big boot-last in it, as though, if I didn't hop quick, he'd be glad to help me for'a'd himself.
"'Never mind, Johnny,' says mother, as I leaned my head on her piller, a-cryin', and told her what the shoemaker had said, 'it'll all be right when father comes back.'
"She didn't mind about the tea, she said, water would serve just as well; and then, arter pickin' at the bed-clothes a leetle, she said she felt sleepy, and turned her face to the wall.
"All winter long she was sick, and there was heart-breakin' things all the while comin' to pass; but I'd rather not tell on 'em.