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It was impossible for any one to speak for a moment or two; the sisters felt their own uprooted condition afresh, and their guests for the first time really comprehended the piteous contrast between that neat little village house, which now seemed a palace of comfort, and this cold, unpainted upper room in the remote Janes farmhouse. It was an unwelcome thought to Mrs. Trimble that the well-to-do town of Hampden could provide no better for its poor than this, and her round face flushed with resentment and the shame of personal responsibility. “The girls shall be well settled in the village before another winter, if I pay their board myself,” she made an inward resolution, and took another almost tearful look at the broken stove, the miserable bed, and the sisters’ one hair-covered trunk, on which Mandana was sitting But the poor place was filled with a golden spirit of hospitality.

Rebecca was again discoursing eloquently of the installation; it was so much easier to speak of general subjects, and the sisters had evidently been longing to hear some news. Since the late summer they had not been to church, and presently Mrs. Trimble asked the reason.

“Now, don’t you go to pouring out our woes, Mandy!” begged little old Ann, looking shy and almost girlish, and as if she insisted upon playing that life was still all before them and all pleasure. “Don’t you go to spoilin’ their visit with our complaints! They know well’s we do that changes must come, an’ we’d been so wonted to our home things that this come hard at first; but then they felt for us, I know just as well’s can be. ‘Twill soon be summer again, an’ ’tis real pleasant right out in the fields here, when there ain’t too hot a spell. I’ve got to know a sight o’ singin’ birds since we come.”

“Give me the folks I’ve always known,” sighed the younger sister, who looked older than Miss Ann, and less even-tempered. “You may have your birds, if you want ’em. I do re’lly long to go to meetin’ an’ see folks go by up the aisle. Now, I will speak of it, Ann, whatever you say. We need, each of us, a pair o’ good stout shoes an’ rubbers,–ours are all wore out; an’ we’ve asked an’ asked, an’ they never think to bring ’em, an'”–

Poor old Mandana, on the trunk, covered her face with her arms and sobbed aloud. The elder sister stood over her, and patted her on the thin shoulder like a child, and tried to comfort her. It crossed Mrs. Trimble’s mind that it was not the first time one had wept and the other had comforted. The sad scene must have been repeated many times in that long, drear winter. She would see them forever after in her mind as fixed as a picture, and her own tears fell fast.

“You didn’t see Mis’ Janes’s cunning little boy, the next one to the baby, did you?” asked Ann Bray, turning round quickly at last, and going cheerfully on with the conversation. “Now, hush, Mandy, dear; they’ll think you’re childish! He’s a dear, friendly little creatur’, an’ likes to stay with us a good deal, though we feel’s if it ‘t was too cold for him, now we are waitin’ to get us more wood.”

“When I think of the acres o’ woodland in this town!” groaned Rebecca Wright. “I believe I’m goin’ to preach next Sunday, ‘stead o’ the minister, an’ I’ll make the sparks fly. I’ve always heard the saying, ‘What’s everybody’s business is nobody’s business,’ an’ I’ve come to believe it.”

“Now, don’t you, ‘Becca. You’ve happened on a kind of a poor time with us, but we’ve got more belongings than you see here, an’ a good large cluset, where we can store those things there ain’t room to have about. You an’ Miss Trimble have happened on a kind of poor day, you know. Soon’s I git me some stout shoes an’ rubbers, as Mandy says, I can fetch home plenty o’ little dry boughs o’ pine; you remember I was always a great hand to roam in the woods? If we could only have a front room, so ‘t we could look out on the road an’ see passin’, an’ was shod for meetin’, I don’ know’s we should complain. Now we’re just goin’ to give you what we’ve got, an’ make out with a good welcome. We make more tea ‘n we want in the mornin’, an’ then let the fire go down, since ‘t has been so mild. We’ve got a good cluset” (disappearing as she spoke), “an’ I know this to be good tea, ’cause it’s some o’ yourn, Mis’ Trimble. An’ here’s our sprigged chiny cups that R’becca knows by sight, if Mis’ Trimble don’t. We kep’ out four of ’em, an’ put the even half dozen with the rest of the auction stuff. I’ve often wondered who’d got ’em, but I never asked, for fear ‘t would be somebody that would distress us. They was mother’s, you know.”