one dancing in the dark passage. Then there was the same noise in the kitchen below, and a merry voice was heard singing snatches of wild songs, while occasionally peals of laughter were heard mingled with Mrs. Grundy's harsher tones. Mary's curiosity was roused, and as soon as Alice was fairly asleep, she resolved to go down and ascertain the cause of the disturbance, which had now subsided.
As she opened her door, she saw advancing towards her from the farthest extremity of the hall, a little, shrivelled up woman, with wild flashing eyes, and hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. She was shaking her fist in a very threatening manner, and as she drew nearer Mary saw that her face was going through a great variety of changes, being at first perfectly hideous in its expression, and then instantly changing into something equally ridiculous, though not quite so frightful. Quickly divining that this must be Sal Furbush, Mary sprang back, but had not time to fasten her door ere the wild woman was there. In a tremor of terror Mary ran under the bed as the only hiding-place the room afforded, but her heart almost ceased beating as she saw her pursuer about to follow her. Springing out with a bound she would perhaps have made her egress through the open window, had not Sally prevented her by seizing her arm, at the same time saying, "Don't be alarmed, duckey, I shan't hurt you; I'm Sal. Don't you know Sal?"
The voice was low and musical, and there was something in its tones which in a measure quieted Mary's fears, but she took good care to keep at a respectful distance. After a while Sally asked, "Have you come here to board?"
"I have come here to live," answered Mary, "I have no other home."
"Well, for your sake I hope there'll be an improvement in the fare, for if there isn't I declare I won't stay much longer, though to be sure you don't look as if you'd been used to any thing better than skim-milk. What ails your teeth, child?"
Involuntarily Mary's hand went up to her mouth, and Sally, who if she expected an answer, forgot to wait for it, continued. "Do you know grammar, child?"
Mary replied that she had studied it a few months in Worcester, and a few weeks in Chicopee.
"Oh, I am so glad," said Sal, "for now I shall have an associate. Why, the greatest objection I have to the kind of people one meets with here, is that they are so horribly vulgar in their conversation and murder the Queen's English so dreadfully. But won't you and I have good times saying the rules in concert?"
Unfortunately Mary's knowledge of grammar was rather limited, and as she did not exactly fancy Sal's proposition, she answered that she had nearly forgotten all she ever knew of grammar.
"Oh, that's nothing, child that's nothing," said Sal. "It will return to you gradually. Why, things that happened forty years ago and were forgotten twenty years ago come back to me every day, but then I always did forget more in one night than some people, Miss Grundy, for instance, ever knew in all their life."
"Have you lived here long?" asked Mary.
"Yes, a great while," and the expression of Sally's face grew graver, as she added, "Perhaps you don't know that I lost little Willie, and then Willie's father died too, and left me all alone. Their graves are away on the great western prairies, beneath the buckeye trees, and one night when the winter wind was howling fearfully, I fancied I heard little Willie's voice calling to me from out the raging storm. So I lay down on the turf above my lost darling, and slept so long, that when I awoke my hair had all turned gray and I was in Chicopee, where Willie's father used to live. After a while they brought me here and said I was crazy, but I wasn't. My head was clear as a bell, and I knew as much as I ever did, only I couldn't tell it, because, you see, the right words wouldn't come. But I don't care now I've found some one who knows grammar. How many genders are there, child?"
"Four," answered Mary, who had been studying Smith.
Instantly Sal seized Mary's hands, and nearly wrenching them off in her joy, capered and danced about the room, leaping over the cradle, and finally exclaiming, "Capital! You think just as I do, don't you? And have the same opinion of her? What are the genders, dear? Repeat them"
"Masculine, Feminine, Neuter and Common," said Mary
"O, get out with your common gender," screamed Sal. "My grammar don't read so. It says Masculine, Feminine Neuter and Grundy gender, to which last but one thing in the world belongs, and that is the lady below with the cast iron back and India-rubber tongue."
"Do you mean Mrs. Grundy?" asked Mary, and Sal replied, "Mrs. Grundy? and who may Mrs. Grundy be? Oh, I understand, she's been stuffing you."
"Been what?" said Mary.
"Excuse me," answered Sal. "That's a slang term I've picked up since I've been here. It's so easy to get contaminated, when one is constantly associated with such low people. I mean that during my temporary seclusion Miss Grundy has probably given you erroneous impressions which I take pleasure in correcting. She has no more right to order us boarders around, and say when we shall breathe and when we shan't, than I have. She's nothing more nor less than a town pauper herself, and has to work at that."
"So do we all," interrupted Mary, and Sal continued. "On that point you are slightly mistaken, my dear. I don't have to. I didn't come here to work. They tried it once."
Here pushing her tangled hair back from her brow, she pointed to a long scar, saying, "Do you see that?" Mary nodded, and Sal continued: "When I first came here, the overseer was a bad man, not at all like Mr. Parker. One day he told me to wash the dinner dishes, and to use more than a pint of water, too, so I gathered them up and threw them into the well; but this method of washing did not suit the overseer's ideas of housekeeping, so he took a raw hide, and said he would either 'break my will,' or 'break my neck,' and because he could not break my will, and dared not break my neck, he contented himself with breaking my head. Every blow that he struck me was like melted lead poured into my brains, which puffed out like sausages, and have never recovered their wonted dimensions. The town took the matter up, but I don't remember much about it, for I went to sleep again, and when I woke the overseer was gone, and Mr. Parker was here in his place. I was chained like a wild beast under the garret stairs, and Miss Grundy's broad, stiff back was hung there for a door. Nobody asks me to work now, but occasionally, just for pastime, I go into Mrs. Parker's room and read to her, and tell her about my Willie, who went away."
"How long has Mrs. Parker been sick?" asked Mary.
"I'm no judge of time," answered Sal, "but it seems a great while, for since her illness Miss Grundy has been at the helm in the kitchen, and perhaps it is all right that she should be, for somebody must manage, and, as I had declared I would not work, 'twould hardly have been consistent to change my mind. And then, too, Miss Grundy seems admirably suited for the place. Her forte is among pots and kettles, and she will get the most work out of the boarders, keep them on the least fare, and put more money into Mr. Parker's pocket at the end of a year, than any one he could hire, and this is the secret of his bearing so much from her."
"But why does she want to fill his pockets with money?"
Sal gave a knowing wink and replied, "You are not old enough to see into every thing, so I dare say you wouldn't understand me if I should hint that Mrs. Parker has the consumption, and can't live always." Mary's looks plainly told that this remark had given her no idea whatever, and Sal continued, "I knew you wouldn't understand, for you haven't my discernment to begin with, and then you were never sent away to school, were you?"
"No, ma'am, was you?" asked Mary.
"Say 'were you,' if you please, it is more euphonious Yes, I was at school in Leicester two years, and was called the best grammarian there, but since I've
