Then, when all was ready and Abijah Flagg at the door, came a telegram from Hannah: "Come at once. Mother has had bad accident."
In less than an hour Rebecca was started on her way to Sunnybrook, her heart palpitating with fear as to what might be awaiting her at her journey's end.
Death, at all events, was not there to meet her; but something that looked at first only too much like it. Her mother had been standing on the hay-mow superintending some changes in the barn, had been seized with giddiness, they thought, and slipped. The right knee was fractured and the back strained and hurt, but she was conscious and in no immediate danger, so Rebecca wrote, when she had a moment to send aunt Jane the particulars.
"I don' know how 'tis," grumbled Miranda, who was not able to sit up that day; "but from a child I could never lay abed without Aurelia's gettin' sick too. I don' know 's she could help fallin', though it ain't any place for a woman,—a haymow; but if it had n't been that, 't would 'a' been somethin' else. Aurelia was born unfortunate. Now she 'll probably be a cripple, and Rebecca 'll have to nurse her instead of earning a good income somewheres else."
"Her first duty 's to her mother," said aunt Jane; "I hope she'll always remember that."
"Nobody remembers anything they 'd ought to,
