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“My land!” cried Miss Susan, aghast. Then she and the schoolmaster, by one accord, began to laugh.

But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag he had been carrying.

“I guess I trailed it through some o’ the drifts,” he remarked. “The road’s pretty narrer, this season o’ the year.”

“You give us a real start,” said Susan. “We thought be sure ’twas Solomon, an’ mebbe the Queen o’ Sheba follerin’ arter. Why, Solon Slade, you ain’t walked way over to Tiverton Street!”

“Yes, I have,” asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man, possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very soft voice. He was Susan’s widowed brother-in-law, and the neighbors said he was clever, but hadn’t no more spunk ‘n a wet rag.

Susan had risen and laid down her knitting. She approached the table and rested one hand on it, a hawk-like brightness in her eyes.

“What you got in that bag?” asked she.

Solon was enjoying his certainty that he held the key to the situation.

“I got a mite o’ cheese,” he answered, approaching the fire and spreading his hands to the blaze.

“You got anything else? Now, Solon, don’t you keep me here on tenter-hooks! You got a letter?”

“Well,” said Solon, “I thought I might as well look into the post-office an’ see.”

“You thought so! You went a-purpose! An’ you walked because you al’ays was half shackled about takin’ horses out in bad goin’. You hand me over that letter!”

Solon approached the table, a furtive twinkle in his blue eyes. He lifted the bag and opened it slowly. First, he took out a wedge-shaped package.

“That’s the cheese,” said he. “Herb.”

“My land!” ejaculated Miss Susan, while the schoolmaster looked on and smiled. “You better ha’ come to me for cheese. I’ve got a plenty, tansy an’ sage, an’ you know it. I see it! There! you gi’ me holt on ‘t!” It was a fugitive white gleam in the bottom of the bag; she pounced upon it and brought up a letter. Midway in the act of tearing it open, she paused and looked at Solon with droll entreaty. “It’s your letter, by rights!” she added tentatively.

“Law!” said he, “I dunno who it’s directed to, but I guess it’s as much your’n as anybody’s.”

Miss Susan spread open the sheets with an air of breathless delight. She bent nearer the lamp. “‘Dear father and auntie,'” she began.

“There!” remarked Solon, in quiet satisfaction, still warming his hands at the blaze. “There! you see ’tis to both.”

“My! how she does run the words together! Here!” Miss Susan passed it to the schoolmaster. “You read it. It’s from Jenny. You know she’s away to school, an’ we didn’t think best for her to come home Christmas. I knew she’d write for Christmas. Solon, I told you so!”

The schoolmaster took the letter, and read it aloud. It was a simple little message, full of contentment and love and a girl’s new delight in life. When he had finished, the two older people busied themselves a moment without speaking, Solon in picking up a chip from the hearth, and Susan in mechanically smoothing the mammoth roses on the side of the carpetbag.

“Well, I ‘most wish we’d had her come home,” said he at last, clearing his throat.

“No, you don’t either,” answered Miss Susan promptly. “Not with this snow, an’ comin’ out of a house where it’s het up, into cold beds an’ all. Now I’m goin’ to git you a mite o’ pie an’ some hot tea.”

She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began clearing up.