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There was silence for a few minutes, while she toasted her feet, and the man stood shambling from one foot to the other and furtively watching her and the road. Suddenly she rose, and lifted a pot-cover.

“What you got for dinner?” she inquired, genially. “I’m as holler’s a horn!”

“I put some potatoes on,” said he, gruffly.

“Got any pork? or have you used it all up?”

“I guess there’s pork! I ‘ain’t touched it. I ‘ain’t eat anything but potatoes; an’ I’ve chopped wood for them, an’ for what I burnt.”

“Do tell!” said Mrs. Wadleigh. She set the potatoes forward, where they would boil more vigorously. “Well, you go down sullar an’ bring me up a little piece o’ pork–streak o’ fat an’ streak o’ lean–an’ I’ll fry it. I’ll sweep up here a mite while you’re gone. Why, I never see such a lookin’ kitchen! What’s your name?” she called after him, as he set his foot on the Upper stair.

He hesitated. “Joe!” he said, falteringly.

“All right, then, Joe, you fly round an’ git the pork!” She took down the broom from its accustomed nail, and began sweeping joyously; the man, fishing in the pork-barrel, listened meanwhile to the regular sound above. Once it stopped, and he held his breath for a moment, and stood at bay, ready to dash up the stairs and past his pursuers, had she let them in. But it was only her own step, approaching the cellar door.

“Joe!” she called. “You bring up a dozen apples, Bald’ins. I’ll fry them, too.”

Something past one o’clock, they sat down together to as strange a meal as the little kitchen had ever seen. Bread and butter were lacking, but there was quince preserve, drawn from some hidden hoard, the apples and pork, and smoking tea. Mrs. Wadleigh’s spirits rose. Home was even better than her dreams had pictured it. She told her strange guest all about her darter Lucy and her darter Ann’s children; and he listened, quite dazed and utterly speechless.

“There!” she said at last, rising, “I dunno’s I ever eat such a meal o’ victuals in my life, but I guess it’s better’n many a poor soldier used to have. Now, if you’ve got some wood to chop, you go an’ do it, an’ I’ll clear up this kitchen; it’s a real hurrah’s nest, if ever there was one!”

All that afternoon, the stranger chopped wood, pausing, from time to time, to look from the shed door down the country road; and Mrs. Wadleigh, singing “Fly like a Youthful,” “But O! their end, their dreadful end,” and like melodies which had prevailed when she “set in the seats,” flew round, indeed, and set the kitchen in immaculate order. Evidently her guest had seldom left that room. He had slept there on the lounge. He had eaten his potatoes there, and smoked his pipe.

When the early dusk set in, and Mrs. Wadleigh had cleared away their supper of baked potatoes and salt fish, again with libations of quince, she drew up before the shining stove, and put her feet on the hearth.

“Here!” she called to the man, who was sitting uncomfortably on one corner of the woodbox, and eying her with the same embarrassed watchfulness. “You draw up, too! It’s the best time o’ the day now, ‘tween sunset an’ dark.”

“I guess I’d better be goin’,” he returned, doggedly.

“Goin’? Where?”

“I don’t know. But I’m goin’.”

“Now look here,” said Mrs. Wadleigh, with rigor. “You take that chair, an’ draw up to the fire. You do as I tell you!”

He did it.

“Now, I can’t hender your goin’, but if you do go, I’ve got a word to say to you.”

“You needn’t say it! I don’t want nobody’s advice.”

“Well, you’ve got to have it jest the same! When you bile potaters, don’t you let ’em run over onto the stove. Now you remember! I’ve had to let the fire go down here, an’ scrub till I could ha’ cried. Don’t you never do such a thing ag’in, wherever you be!”