“I’m tired of such nonsense!” he exclaimed, with surprising indignation.  “Mary, I wish you to arrange your affairs so that you can leave them for six months at least.  I am going to spend this winter in Europe.”

“Why, Tom, dear!” said his wife, appealingly.  “I couldn’t leave my business any way in the”—­

But she caught sight of a look on his usually placid countenance that was something more than decision, and refrained from saying anything more.

And three weeks from that day they sailed.

Miss Debby’s Neighbors

There is a class of elderly New England women which is fast dying out:—­those good souls who have sprung from a soil full of the true New England instincts; who were used to the old-fashioned ways, and whose minds were stored with quaint country lore and tradition.  The fashions of the newer generations do not reach them; they are quite unconscious of the western spirit and enterprise, and belong to the old days, and to a fast-disappearing order of things.

But a shrewder person does not exist than the spokeswoman of the following reminiscences, whose simple history can be quickly told, since she spent her early life on a lonely farm, leaving it only once for any length of time,—­one winter when she learned her trade of tailoress.  She afterward sewed for her neighbors, and enjoyed a famous reputation for her skill; but year by year, as she grew older, there was less to do, and at last, to use her own expression, “Everybody got into the way of buying cheap, ready-made-up clothes, just to save ’em a little trouble,” and she found herself out of business, or nearly so.  After her mother’s death, and that of her favorite younger brother Jonas, she left the farm and came to a little house in the village, where she lived most comfortably the rest of her life, having a small property which she used most sensibly.  She was always ready to render any special service with her needle, and was a most welcome guest in any household, and a most efficient helper.  To be in the same room with her for a while was sure to be profitable, and as she grew older she was delighted to recall the people and events of her earlier life, always filling her descriptions with wise reflections and much quaint humor.  She always insisted, not without truth, that the railroads were making everybody look and act of a piece, and that the young folks were more alike than people of her own day.  It is impossible to give the delightfulness of her talk in any written words, as well as many of its peculiarities, for her way of going round Robin Hood’s barn between the beginning of her story and its end can hardly be followed at all, and certainly not in her own dear loitering footsteps.

On an idle day her most devoted listener thought there was nothing better worth doing than to watch this good soul at work.  A book was held open for the looks of the thing, but presently it was allowed to flutter its leaves and close, for Miss Debby began without any apparent provocation:—­