that it makes one ache to think of to-day, and some pieces of India china besides, brought over seas by some sea-going Rock of a former generation:  and there were silver spoons in the iron box under Abby’s bed, and the dragon tea-pot on the high narrow mantel-piece was always full, but not with tea-leaves.  Yes, and there was no better cow in the village than Abby’s, save those two fancy heifers that Jacques de Arthenay had lately bought.  Altogether, she did not wonder that some of the weaker brethren, who found their own farms “hard sledding,” should think enough of her pleasant home to be willing to take her along with it, since they could do no better; but they did not get it.  Abby found life very pleasant, now that grief was softened down into tender recollection.  To be alone, and able to do things just when she wanted to do them, and in her own way; to consider what she herself liked to eat, and to wear, and to do; to feel that she could come and go, rise up and lie down, at her own will,—­was strange but pleasant to her.  How long the pleasure would have lasted is another question, for the woman’s nature was to love and to serve; but just now there was no doubt that she was enjoying her freedom.

And now she had taken in this little stranger, just because she felt like it; it was a new luxury, a new amusement, that was all.  Such a pretty little creature, so soft and young, and with that brightness in her face!  Sister Lizzie was light-complected, and this child didn’t favour her, not the least mite; yet it was some like the same feeling, as if it were a kitten or a pretty bird to take care of, and feed and pet.  So thought Abby, as she tucked up Marie in Sister Lizzie’s little white bed, in the pink ribbon chamber, as she had named it in sport, after she had let Lizzie furnish it to her taste, that last year before she was married.  The child looked about her as if it were a palace, instead of a lean-to chamber with a sloping roof.  She had never seen anything like this in her life, since those days when she went to the chateau.  She touched the white walls softly, and passed her hand over the pink mats on the bureau with wondering awe.  And then she curled up in the white bed when Abby bade her, as like a kitten as anything could be.  “Oh, you are good, good!” cried the child, whom the warmth and comfort and kindness seemed to have lifted into another world from the cold, sordid one in which she had lived so long.  She caught the kind hard knotted hand, and kissed it; but Abby snatched it away, and blushed to her eyebrows, feeling that something improper had occurred.  “There! there!” she said, half confused, half reproving.  “You don’t want to do such things as that!  I’ve done no more than was right, and you alone and friendless, and night coming on.  Go to sleep now, like a good girl, and we’ll see in the morning.”  So Marie went to sleep in Sister Lizzie’s bed, with her fiddle lying across her feet, since she could