“I don’t know where we can all set,” lamented sister Mandana.  “There ain’t but the one chair an’ the bed; t’other chair’s too rickety; an’ we’ve been promised another these ten days; but first they’ve forgot it, an’ next Mis’ Janes can’t spare it,—­one excuse an’ another.  I am goin’ to git a stump o’ wood an’ nail a board on to it, when I can git outdoor again,” said Mandana, in a plaintive voice.  “There, I ain’t goin’ to complain o’ nothin’, now you’ve come,” she added; and the guests sat down, Mrs. Trimble, as was proper, in the one chair.

“We’ve sat on the bed many’s the time with you, ‘Becca, an’ talked over our girl nonsense, ain’t we?  You know where ’twas—­in the little back bedroom we had when we was girls, an’ used to peek out at our beaux through the strings o’ mornin’-glories,” laughed Ann Bray delightedly, her thin face shining more and more with joy.  “I brought some o’ them mornin’-glory seeds along when we come away, we’d raised ‘em so many years; an’ we got ’em started all right, but the hens found ’em out.  I declare I chased them poor hens, foolish as ’twas; but the mornin’-glories I’d counted on a sight to remind me o’ home.  You see, our debts was so large, after my long sickness an’ all, that we didn’t feel ’twas right to keep back anything we could help from the auction.”

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.”