the parlor called out, imperiously, "Pimble, I want you!" 

 The man roused himself and rushed to the door in such haste as to lose both his slippers. 

 "What are you blabbing about out there?" Dilly heard Mrs. Pimble ask, in an angry tone. 

 "Dilly Danforth has come for some wood," was the moody reply. 

 "And so you are giving wood to that lazy, foolish, stupid creature, are you?" 

 "No, I am not. She says her boy is sick and she has no fire." 

 "A pretty tale, and I hope 'tis true. She'll learn by and by her sin and folly. If she had asserted her own rights, as she should have done, and left her drunken husband and moping boy years ago, she might have been well off in the world by this time. But she chose like an idiot to live with him and endure his abuses till he died, and since she has tied herself to that foolish boy. O, I have no patience with such stupid women! They are a disgrace to the true female race. Go and tell her to go home and never enter my doors a-begging again." 

 Dilly did not wait to receive this unfeeling message, but pulled her thin blanket around her, and stole out in the chill night air, and ran toward home as swiftly as possible. She stumbled over something on the threshold. It was a bundle of firewood. How came it there? She could not tell, but seized it in her arms, ran hastily in, and approached Willie's bed-side. He was still sleeping tranquilly, and that night a comfortable fire, lighted by unknown generosity, blazed on the lowly hearth. 

 CHAPTER V. 

"There is a jarring discord in my ear,

It setteth all my soul ashake with fear,

Good sir, canst drive it off?"——

 Old Play. 

Old Play.

 

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