were of the utmost importance to her.

"Are you thinking of trying for one of the prizes?" sneered Hannah,
piercing her with her eyes, and now indeed the ready color flowed into
Marcia's face. Her ruse had been detected.

"If I were a man and understood machinery I believe I would. What a grand
thing it would be to be able to invent a thing like an engine that would
be of so much use to the world," she answered bravely.

"They are most dangerous machines," said Aunt Amelia disapprovingly. "No
right-minded Christian who wishes to live out the life his Creator has
given him would ever ride behind one. I have heard that boilers always
explode."

"They are most unnecessary!" said Aunt Hortense severely, as if that
settled the question for all time and all railroad corporations.

But Marcia was glad for once of their disapproval and entered most
heartily into a discussion of the pros and cons of engines and steam,
quoting largely from David's last article for the paper on the subject,
until Hannah and Lemuel moved slowly away. The discussion served to keep
the aunts from inquiring further that evening about the sister in New
York.

Marcia begged them to go with her into the kitchen and see the store of
good things that had been brought to the minister's house by his loving
parishioners. Bags of flour and meal, pumpkins, corn in the ear, eggs, and
nice little pats of butter. A great wooden tub of doughnuts, baskets of
apples and quinces, pounds of sugar and tea, barrels of potatoes, whole
hams, a side of pork, a quarter of beef, hanks of yarn, and strings of
onions. It was a goodly array. Marcia felt that the minister must be
beloved by his people. She watched him and his wife as they greeted their
people, and wished she knew them better, and might come and see them
sometimes, and perhaps eventually feel as much at home with them as with
her own dear minister.

She avoided Hannah during the remainder of the evening. When the evening
was over and she went upstairs to get her wraps from the high four-poster
bedstead, she had almost forgotten Hannah and her ill-natured, prying
remarks. But Hannah had not forgotten her. She came forth from behind the
bed curtains where she had been searching for a lost glove, and remarked
that she should think Marcia would be lonely this first winter away from
home and want her sister with her a while.

But the presence of Hannah always seemed a mental stimulus to the spirit
of Marcia.