a stab, and who had not forgotten her encounter of two days ago, spoke up with a little malicious laugh. "Miss Hester 'ain't got no family: mebbe she might take the child. 'Pears like she ought to be fond o' childern."
Mrs. Davis immediately came to the rescue. "We don't expect no sich thing of Miss Hester. She's never been around childern, an' don't know nothin' about takin' keer o' them; an' boys air hard to manage, anyhow."
"Oh, I should think Miss Hester could manage 'most anything," was the sneering rejoinder.
The women were aghast at such insolence. They didn't know what the effect might be on Miss Prime. They looked at her in alarm. Her cold grey eye impaled Mrs. Warren for an instant only, and then, paying no more attention to her, she said quietly, I was thinkin' this whole matter over while I was finishin' up my work to come here, an', says I to myself, 'Now there's Melissy Davis,—she's the very one that 'ud be a mother to that child,' says I, 'an' she'd bring him up right as a child should be brought up.' I don't know no more
