same."

Fanny looked annoyed, and Ellen squeezed her arm with an amused
giggle.

"I didn't know, mother, there was anything we wanted to know,
particularly," she said coldly.

"Well, you know both of us have been real interested in the work
here," protested Mrs. Dodge, wonderingly. "I remember you was asking
Jim only last night if Miss Orr was really going to--"

"I hope you'll like to see the house," said Lydia, as if she had not
heard; "of course, being here every day I don't notice the changes as
you might."

"You aren't living here yet, are you?" asked Mrs. Dix. "I understood
Mrs. Solomon Black to say you weren't going to leave her for awhile
yet."

"No; I shall be there nights and Sundays till everything is finished
here," said Lydia. "Mrs. Black makes me very comfortable."

"Well, I think most of us ladies had ought to give you a vote of
thanks on account of feeding the men-folks, noons," put in Mrs.
Dodge. "It saves a lot of time not to have to look after a
dinner-pail."

"Mother," interrupted Fanny in a thin, sharp voice, quite unlike her
own, "you know Jim always comes home to his dinner."

"Well, what if he does; I was speaking for the rest of th' women,"
said Mrs. Dodge. "I'm sure it's very kind of Miss Orr to think of
such a thing as cooking a hot dinner for all those hungry men."

Mrs. Dodge had received a second check from the assignees that very
morning from the sale of the old bank building, and she was
proportionately cheerful and content.

"Well; if this isn't handsome!" cried Mrs. Dix, pausing in the hall
to look about her. "I declare I'd forgotten how it used to look. This
is certainly better than having an old ruin standing here. But, of
course it brings back old days."

She sighed, her dark, comely face clouding with sorrow.

"You know," she went on, turning confidentially to Lydia, "that
dreadful bank failure was the real cause of my poor husband's death.
He never held up his head after that. They suspected at first he was
implicated in the steal. But Mr. Dix wasn't anything like Andrew
Bolton. No; indeed! He wouldn't have taken a cent that belonged to
anybody else--not if he was to die for it!"

"That's so," confirmed Mrs. Dodge. "What Andrew Bolton got was
altogether too good for him. Come right down to it, he wasn't no
better than a murderer!"

And she nodded her head emphatically.

Fanny and Ellen, who stood looking on, reddened impatiently at this:

"I'm sick and tired