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Show THE LATE ME. KNAPP. ' You see, she was such a queer little thing that we couldn't help taking her ! to our hearts at once. But there! j that's jnst tha way with me! It al-: al-: ways seems to me as if everybody ought to know the people I know, without with-out any particular explanation. Well, it was just this way. That summer that mother and I wanted to paper the sitting room, though father would have given mother his head if she had asked for it, heads didn't count, it was money we needed, and of that he had none. Then after much hard thinking I devised a plan, and though it was a great shock to father and mother at first, I carried the day, and the upshot of it was that we advertised adver-tised for a summer boarder for our spare room. Unless you have done the same thing at some awful crisis in your life you can never for a moment imagine. Oh, reader, the awful mixture mix-ture of hope and fear that held place in our hearts until we received a neatly neat-ly written, briefly worded note, saed "Phoebe Knapp." Mother was taken with it at once, and as she delights in all things miserable mis-erable because she can make them feel better, she was especially captivated by the closing sentence, which ran: "Having recently met with a bereavement, bereave-ment, the rest and quiet you offer will be a great boon to me." "Widow, likely," said father, as we read this note aloud in his presence (for the fifth time). "Miss or Mrs., Katie?" asked mother, although we both knew the signature by heart. "Yours sincerely, Phoebe Knapp." "I'm sure I don't know. I can't read between the lines," I answered, rather flippantly, I fear. The unknown was beginning to take a sort of weird possession of me. It seemed uncanny that everything should turn upon the movements of a stranger whom we had never seen, and wherever I turned I could not help seeing see-ing a silent figure in a long crape veil lifting its hand and commanding me to do this or that, upon which I was already engaged. However, we were all ready for her at last, and when father came from the station and deposited upon the front piazza a tiny little woman of about 50 years of age, with big, frightened gray eyes, and delicate, sensitive features, a creature that would have looked small alongside a robust child of 10 the contrast con-trast between the little object and the commanding figure of my imagination was so great that I almost had a fit of hysterics on the spot. I took refuge In flight, while mother cooed and coddled cod-dled the "poor dear" and took her up to her room. You see, mother was just in her element, while I had all my notions no-tions to readjust to existing circumstances. circum-stances. My flights of fancy will be the death of me some day, father says. I caught mother on the stair a moment mo-ment as tbey were coming down and I. wide-awake girl at that time, peculiarly pecu-liarly susceptible to first impressions, imbibed an impression of the late Mr. Knapp's eccentricites that was not altogether al-together complimentary to the departed gentleman. "Poor dear!" she said one day. "He tried so hard to speak. If he only could have told his wants!" We never asked her any questions. We just let her talk on. feeling that this was kindest kind-est and best. I inferred from this last remark that her husband had been affected af-fected with paralysis, particularly as she had said on another occasion, "I used to sit at my window and James sat at his, I sewing, he looking out of the windows at what was going on in the street. He seemed perfectly happy hap-py as long as I was there. But then we can never tell. I often wish now that I had done more for him, or could kave learned better what he wanted." "What did the physicians say or do?" I asked. "They said it was the breaking up of the system by old age. I never felt that they quite understood the case." Poor little thing! Married to an aged paralytic and yet regretting his death as the breaking up of the one tie on earth! What desolation, what utter desolation her case seemed to me! I was moved to take her in my arms and weep with her, which was a great deal for me. Not only was the late Mr. Knapp old and imbecile and paralyse, but he had other traits which must have rendered him highly objectionable as a daily companion. "Just about this time every afternoon after-noon I always gave James a bowl of cream with fresh sponge cake in it. He would not touch it unless it was in a certain bowl nor unless it was fresh from the baker's. And yet they tried to persuade me that he didn't know anything! " From which I inferred that, added to his other .peculiarities, the late Mr. Knapp possessed an extremely unpleasant unpleas-ant temper. "And, oh, Mrs. Curtis," she wailed, "after the poor dear was dead and gone they wouldn't let me bury him in the family lot." From which I Inferred that the dear departed had come of a family of unpleasant tempers. Such heathenish doings I never heard tell of. Surely, however they felt towards him during his life, nothing but a fiend would deny him the family resting place after he was dead. But I forgot my interest in Mrs. Knapp and her affairs by reason of some of my own. I had a delightful letter from Tom Dixon, saying he would be with us for a week. Now, Tom was a favorite cousin of mine, and I spent a gocd deal of time furnishing fur-nishing up my little belongings so that I might look my very best when he came. And then, I was putting finishing finish-ing touches to Tom's room, too, until the minute he arrived, so that I really had no time to talk to Mrs. Knapp or to listen to her if she wished to talk to me. Dear old Tom! How good it was to see him that day with his blithe ways and "bonny brown hair!" We talked and talked till supper was called, and then we still talked all the way to the dining room door, and yet we found time to say nothing about anyone but ourselves. As we seated ourselves at the table I saw Mrs. Knapp's vacant place (for she was a little late) and realized that I had not- mentioned her presence in our household. "Why, we have a boarder, Tom," I began, In answer to his look of inquiry at the empty place. Just as I spoke she glided in. "Why, who on earth would have thought of finding you here!" and he shook her hand in a grasp so hearty that I could see it was painful to her. She colored faintly, and said a little unsteadily, "This is, indeed, a surprise, Mr. Dixon," and I read between the lines that the surprise was not an altogether al-together agreeable one. But Tom didn't seem to notice anything any-thing (most men are dumb about such things, you know), so I kept my eyes and ears open, and waited for developments. develop-ments. At last they came, and in the most startling manner. "So I hear poor Jim is gone at last?" said Tom, turning to Mrs. Knapp as he buttered his seventh biscuit (Tom always was rather a greedy youth, and enjoyed most heartily the good things of this life, mother's cooking among them). "Oh, Mr. Dixon, how can you speak of him in that way!" exclaimed tha widow, hurrying from the room, in a fit of sobbing. Tom stared. "Well, I'll be darned! What under the sun is the matter with the woman, anyway?" he exclaimed. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," your-self," replied I, severely. "No wonder the poor woman is shocked to hear you speak of her husband in that way after he's dead and gone." Tom stared again. And then he broke into such spasms of laughter that I thought he had suddenly lost his mind. I had heard of such things, but I had fortunately been spared the sight of them so far. "Her husband," he exclaimed, when he could catch his brea'h, as he wiped j the tears from his eyes. "Her husband! hus-band! She hadn't any husband. She never was married. Jim was her old I black cat!" and then he went off again , into spasms. No wonder the hard-hearted relatives j had objected to having all that was i mortal of "the late Mr. Knapp" laid in the family 1 it! Mother and I looked at each other and said nothing. What was there to say? But we thought things. I don't know whether they were the same things or not, but we certainly though! j tfeir.es. i I IlijigfcSff11 TOM STARED, breathed softly into her ear, "Miss or Mrs.?" "I don't know. I couldn't find out," answered mother in that awful stage whisper of hers that sends me nearly Into fits whenever she tries it. But our boarder did not seem to notice. I made a venture on a bold stroke. "I. shall call her Mrs. Knapp, and then she can correct me if she doesn't like it. I've always heaLVl that it gives a middle-aged married woman much greater offense to be called 'Miss' than it does to address a single sister as 'Mrs.,' so here goes." "I hope you had a pleasant trip down, M-m-," I said, pleasantly, allowing al-lowing my voice to die away on the last syllable as I found my courage oozing out at the tip of my tongue. I couldn't say Mrs. Knapp after all, to eave me. I noticed with much amazement that father and mother avoided the pitfall as successfully as I did, during that first meal, ancl we all went out on the piazza after supper to enjoy the sunset. sun-set. Here our guest set our minds at rest. "How James would have enjoyed this!" exclaimed she, softly, as if half to herself. Mother nodded so vigorously vigor-ously and triumphantly behind her back that I was afraid she would notice no-tice it, and so hastened to nod in reply. Ye knew now. She was a widow. "He loved to sit beside me and watch the setting sun, even in the city," she went on softly. "It seems terribly lonely without him. Oh, if I could only have brought him out into such a peaceful place as this, lie might lie alive now! That last hot spell was so hard on him. I thought perhaps he had a sunstroke, but I could not tell.' Mother's eye filled vith sympathetic tears, and as she laid her hand gently over that of Mrs. Knapp she inquired j tenderly, "How lor.g is it since he died, dear?" "Six weeks." answered the widow. "He was all that I had in the world., and I have been so lonely ever tlnc. i Cut. please. Mrs. Curtis. I cannot talk about it quite yet." Nevertheless. fV.e did "talk about It" quite a good ci. a! in the days that followed, fol-lowed, with the effect that I, who was |