efore, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed
like a deer to the woods.

And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal--

_Dont be afrade of it
drink it all_

the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle,
and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She
poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot,
and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her
hands.

"Now," she said to herself, "you've done it! And you're just as nasty
and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!" And she wept to
think of her hardness of heart. "He will never give me a chance to say
'I am sorry,'" she thought. And really, she might have spoken kindly to
the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he
really must not ask her to drink porter with him.

"But it's all over and done now," she said to herself as she sat at her
window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw
the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.

She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for
her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper,

_porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes_

and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her
cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.

She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently
she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view. On the
table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white
paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a
tremulous hand--she _could_ write a very neat hand--

_Thanks._

This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot
rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still,
enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her
entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and
oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the spring
damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her
eyes.

_fine groing weather
Smith_

Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational
commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the
seamstress to continue the exchange of communica