any way of
getting you to the grove,--but what I was thinking of, you know I
couldn't finish Jenny Miller's dress last night, do what I could; and
seeing it raining now, thinks I, they'll have to put off the picnic
till to-morrow or next day, and then Jennie can go as nice as the
rest. She does need a new dress, more than most of the girls who has
them. And she's so sweet and pretty, it's a privilege to do for her.
That's all I was thinking, Delia."

Mrs. Delia Means sniffed audibly, then she groaned.

"Your leg hurting you?" cried Miss Peace, with ready sympathy.

"Well, I guess you'd think so," was the reply. "If _you_ had red-hot
needles run into your leg. Not that it's any matter to anybody."

"Hi-hi," said Miss Peace, cheerily. "It's time the bandages was
changed, Delia. You rest easy just a minute, and I'll run and fetch
the liniment and give you a rub before I put on the new ones."

Mrs. Means remaining alone, it is proper to introduce her to the
reader. She and Miss Peace were the rival seamstresses of Cyrus
Village; that is, they would have been rivals, if Mrs. Means had had
her way; but rivalry was impossible where Anne Peace was one of the
parties. She had always maintained stoutly that Delia Means needed
work a sight more than she did, having a family, and her husband so
weakly and likely to go off with consumption 'most any time. Many and
many a customer had Anne turned from her door, with her pleasant
smile, and "I don't hardly know as I could, though I should be pleased
to accommodate you; but I presume likely Mis' Means could do it for
you. She doos real nice work, and I don't know as she's so much drove
just now as I am."

Delia Case had been a schoolmate of Anne Peace's. She was a pretty
girl, with a lively sense of her own importance and a chronic taste
for a grievance. She had married well, as every one thought, but in
these days her husband had lost his health and Delia was obliged to
put her shoulder to the wheel. She sewed well, but there was a sigh
every time her needle went into the cloth, and a groan when it came
out.

"A husband and four children, and have to sew for a living!"--this was
the burden of her song; and it had become familiar to her neighbours
since David Means had begun to "fail up," as they say in Cyrus.

Anne Peace had always been the faithful friend of "Delia Dumps." (It
was Uncle Asy Green who had given her the name which stuck to her
through thick and thin--Uncle A