“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.”