manner.  I endeavored to comport myself as the easy hostess dispensing the hospitalities of my home to a party of welcome visitors; but with Mr. Winthrop watching my every movement I found the task to do so herculean.  The gardener stood watching the crowd in a helpless way, apparently as uncertain what to do first as any of them.  I looked towards Mr. Winthrop; but he seemed deeply interested, judging from his attitude and expression, in tying up a branch of an overburdened pear tree; but he kept his face turned steadily towards me all the time, I could not help observing.

“What shall I do?” I whispered to Mrs. Blake.

“Tell them to come forred and fill their baskets.”

I cleared my throat, and stepping up to the gardener said:  “If you will please come now, we will fill your baskets.”

At first no one moved; then a delicate, pretty looking woman, with red-rimmed eyes and a baby in her arms came timidly forward.

“What would you like best?” I asked.

“Oh, I can’t tell; they all look so good.”

“We are going to send all of this that is left around to your homes in a wagon.”

“I might take some of these,” she said, pointing longingly to the apples and pears.  The baby was stretching its pinched little arms out to them, and cooing in a pitiful, suppressed way, as if it realized it and must be on its good behavior.  I took the little creature in my arms; its clothes were clean, but so thin and poor, my heart ached, while I looked at them.  I gave it my watch, which it carried with all speed to its mouth; but a soft, delicious pear which I picked from the very limb Mr. Winthrop had been supporting, caused it to drop the watch indifferently.

“Don’t you feel sorry for this little crumb of humanity?” I impulsively asked, forgetting too speedily my determination not to converse with him more than was really necessary.

“Did Madame Buhlman give you lessons in philanthropy along with drawing and music?”

“Oh no, indeed; but I hope God has.  I don’t want my heart to be a rock like”—­and then I shut my mouth and with moist eyes and flushed face turned abruptly from him.

I swallowed down my tears, but my heart was too sore to play any longer with the baby, so I slipped it back into its mother’s arms, who had got her basket filled and was ready to start for home; a neighbor’s lad had come to carry it for her, and with quite a cheerful face she bade me good-bye.  The rest of my crowd had got their baskets filled, and paused with longing eyes regarding the heaps that still remained.  I made their faces grow suddenly much brighter as, with a slight elevation of voice, I said:  “Thomas will carry the rest of these vegetables around for you with the horses.  You will please stand at your doors, and, as he drives along, come out for it.”  There was a subdued murmur of thanks, and then they started homewards.  Mrs. Blake waited a few moments behind them to look around the old place where she had spent so many days, and shook hands with Thomas who remembered her very distinctly.