"She had fallen into the habit!" Then, when No.

21 had come under her care, she had put it all sternly behind her, but one did not know how weak one might be, and a kindly friend might with her persuasion---- Therefore did Mrs.Slater avoid her kindly friends.

There was, however, one friend who was not so readily to be avoided; that was Mrs.Carter.
Mrs.Carter also was a widow, or rather, to speak the direct truth, had discovered one morning, twenty years ago, that Mr.Carter "was gone"; he had never returned.

Those who knew Mrs.Carter intimately said that, on the whole, "things bein' as they was," his departure was not entirely to be wondered at.

Mrs.Carter had a temper of her own, and nothing inflamed it so much as a drop of whisky, and there was nothing in the world she liked so much as "a drop." To meet her casually, you would judge her nothing less than the most amiable of womankind--a large, stout, jolly woman, with a face like a rose, and a quantity of black hair.