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The side door was pushed open, and then shut with a bang. A vigorous stamping of snow followed, and the inner door swung in to admit a woman, very short, very stout, with a round, apple-cheeked face, and twinkling eyes looking out from the enveloping folds of a gray cloud.

“Well!” she said, in a cheery voice, beginning at once to unwind the cloud, “here I be! Didn’t think I’d rain down, did ye? I thought myself, one spell, I should freeze afore I fell!”

Mrs. Pendleton hurried forward, wiping her hands on her apron as she went.

“For the land’s sake, Marthy Wadleigh!” she cried, laying hold of the new-comer by the shoulders, and giving her an ineffectual but wholly delighted shake. “Well, I never! Who brought you over? Though I dunno which way you come. I ‘ain’t looked out–“

“I walked from the corner,” said Mrs. Wadleigh, who never felt any compunction about interrupting her old neighbor. She was unpinning her shawl composedly, as one sure of a welcome. “How do, Cyrus? Jim Thomas took me up jest beyond the depot, an’ give me a lift on his sled; but I was all of a shiver, an’ at the corner, I told him he better let me step down an’ walk. So I come the rest o’ the way afoot an’ alone. You ain’t goin’ to use the oven, be ye? I’ll jest stick my feet in a minute. No, Cyrus, don’t you move! I’ll take t’other side. I guess we sha’n’t come to ‘blows over it.”

She seemed to have brought into the kitchen, with that freshness of outdoor air which the new-comer bears, like a balsam, in his garments, a breath of fuller life, and even of jollity. As she sat there in her good brown dress, with her worked collar, fastened by a large cameo, her gold beads just showing, and her plump hands folded on a capacious lap, she looked the picture of jovial content, quite able to take care of herself, and perhaps apply a sturdy shoulder to the lagging machinery of the world.

“Didn’t you git word I was comin’ this week?” she asked. “I sent you a line.”

“No, we ‘ain’t been so fur’s the post-office,” answered Mirandy, absently. She was debating over her most feasible bill of fare, now that a “pick-up dinner” seemed no longer possible. Moreover, she had something on her mind, and she could not help thinking how unfortunate it was that Cyrus shared her secret. Who could tell at what moment he might broach it? She doubted his discretion. “The roads wa’n’t broke out till day before yisterday.”

“I shouldn’t think they were!” said Mrs. Wadleigh, scornfully, testing the heat with a hand on her skirt, and then lifting the breadths back over her quilted petticoat. “I thought that would be the way on’t, but I’d made up my mind to come, an’ come I would. Cyrus, what’s the matter o’ you? Nothin’ more’n a cold, is it?”

Cyrus had withdrawn from the stove, and was feeling his chin, uncertainly.

“Oh, no, I guess not,” he said. “We’ve been kind o’ peaked, for a week or two, all over the neighborhood; but I guess we shall come out on’t, now we’ve got into the spring. Mirandy, you git me a mite o’ hot water, an’ I’ll see if I can’t shave.”

Mirandy was vigorously washing potatoes at the sink, but she turned, in ever-ready remonstrance.

“Shave!” she ejaculated, “Well, I guess you won’t shave, such a day as this, in that cold bedroom, with a stockin’-leg round your throat, an’ all! You want to git your death? Why, ’twas only last night, Marthy, he had a hemlock sweat, an’ all the ginger tea I could git down into him! An’ then I didn’t know–“

“Law! let him alone!” said Marthy, with a comfortable, throaty laugh. “He’ll feel twice as well, git some o’ them things off his neck. Here, Cyrus, you reach me down your mug–ain’t them your shavin’ things up there?–an’ I’ll fill it for you. You git him a piece o’ flannel, Mirandy, to put on when he’s washed up an’ took all that stuff off his throat. Why, he’s got enough wool round there, if ’twas all in yarn, to knit Old Tobe a pair o’ mittins! An’ they say one o’ his thumbs was bigger’n the hand o’ Providence. You don’t want to try all the goodness out of him, do ye?”