mense kettle of parsnip
stew, her father and her uncles Silas and Caleb again forming a pleasant
expectant semicircle before the fire, but no Wigginses. To-day the stew
was seasoned daintily, and salt had taken the place of saleratus. There
was no stint as to quantity, but there were not enough partakers. Mrs.
Whitman filled a great bowl for Lucy Ann; she sent a dish over to the
Whites; father and Caleb and Silas ate manfully, and passed their plates
again and again; Serena and Ruth and their mother ate all they could,
and the cat had her fill; but the Whitmans, with all their allies, could
not eat their own share and that of the Wigginses. But the stew was
delicious, and as the family ate, their simple homely little feud was
healed, and the parsnip stew smoked in their midst like a pipe of
peace.

THE DICKEY BOY

"I should think it was about time for him to be comin'," said Mrs. Rose.

"So should I," assented Miss Elvira Grayson. She peered around the
corner of the front door. Her face was thin and anxious, and her voice
was so like it that it was unmistakably her own note. One would as soon
expect a crow to chick-a-dee as Miss Elvira to talk in any other way.
She was tall, and there was a sort of dainty angularity about her narrow
shoulders. She wore an old black silk, which was a great deal of dress
for afternoon. She had considerable money in the bank, and could afford
to dress well. She wore also some white lace around her long neck, and
it was fastened with a handsome gold-and-jet brooch. She was knitting
some blue worsted, and she sat back in the front entry, out of the
draft. She considered herself rather delicate.

Mrs. Rose sat boldly out in the yard in the full range of the breeze,
sewing upon a blue-and-white gingham waist for her son Willy. She was a
large, pretty-faced woman in a stiffly starched purple muslin, which
spread widely around her.

"He's been gone 'most an hour," she went on; "I hope there's nothin'
happened."

"I wonder if there's snakes in that meadow?" ruminated Miss Elvira.

"I don't know; I'm gettin' ruther uneasy."

"I know one thing--I shouldn't let him go off so, without somebody older
with him, if he was my boy."

"Well, I don't know what I can do," returned Mrs. Rose, uneasily. "There
ain't anybody to go with him. I can't go diggin' sassafras-root, and you
can't, and his uncle Hiram's too busy, and grandfather is too stiff. And
he is so crazy to go after sassafras-r