“If she had felt to remember me,” continued Sarah Ellen, after they had laughed a little, “I’d full as soon have some of her nice crockery-ware.  She told me once, years ago, when I was stoppin’ to tea with her an’ we were havin’ it real friendly, that she should leave me her Britannia tea-set, but I ain’t got it in writin’, and I can’t say she’s ever referred to the matter since.  It ain’t as if I had a home o’ my own to keep it in, but I should have thought a great deal of it for her sake,” and the speaker’s voice faltered.  “I must say that with all her virtues she never was a first-class housekeeper, but I wouldn’t say it to any but a friend.  You never eat no preserves o’ hers that wa’n’t commencin’ to work, an’ you know as well as I how little forethought she had about putting away her woolens.  I sat behind her once in meetin’ when I was stoppin’ with the Tremletts and so occupied a seat in their pew, an’ I see between ten an’ a dozen moth millers come workin’ out o’ her fitch-fur tippet.  They was flutterin’ round her bonnet same’s ’twas a lamp.  I should be mortified to death to have such a thing happen to me.”

“Every housekeeper has her weak point; I’ve got mine as much as anybody else,” acknowledged Mercy Crane with spirit, “but you never see no moth millers come workin’ out o’ me in a public place.”

“Ain’t your oven beginning to get overhet?” anxiously inquired Sarah Ellen Dow, who was sitting more in the draught, and could not bear to have any accident happen to the supper.  Mrs. Crane flew to a short-cake’s rescue, and presently called her guest to the table.

The two women sat down to deep and brimming cups of tea.  Sarah Ellen noticed with great gratification that her hostess had put on two of the best tea-cups and some citron-melon preserves.  It was not an every-day supper.  She was used to hard fare, poor, hard-working Sarah Ellen, and this handsome social attention did her good.  Sister Crane rarely entertained a friend, and it would be a pleasure to speak of the tea-drinking for weeks to come.

“You’ve put yourself out quite a consid’able for me,” she acknowledged.  “How pretty these cups is!  You oughtn’t to use ’em so common as for me.  I wish I had a home I could really call my own to ask you to, but ’t ain’t never been so I could.  Sometimes I wonder what’s goin’ to become o’ me when I get so I’m past work.  Takin’ care o’ sick folks an’ bein’ in houses where there’s a sight goin’ on an’ everybody in a hurry kind of wears on me now I’m most a-gittin’ in years.  I was wishin’ the other day that I could get with some comfortable kind of a sick person, where I could live right along quiet as other folks do, but folks never sends for me ’less they’re drove to it.  I ain’t laid up anything to really depend upon.”

The situation appealed to Mercy Crane, well to do as she was and not burdened with responsibilities.  She stirred uneasily in her chair, but could not bring herself to the point of offering Sarah Ellen the home she coveted.