ius by baking cakes, cookies, jumbles, and pies,
if demanded. In Montgomery, where only Mrs. William Holton had ever kept
more than one servant (though Fanny Fosdick had attempted higher
flights), Miss Rose was an ever-ready help in times of domestic
adversity to distracted housekeepers who found the maintenance of even
one servant attended with the gravest difficulties.

Miss Nan was an expert needlewoman, and, like her sister, augmented
their income by the labor of her hands. Her contributions to the pot
were, indeed, much larger than Rose's. The clients she served were
chiefly women of fastidious taste in these matters who lived in
surrounding cities. Her exhibitions of cross-stitching, hemstitching,
and drawn-work were so admirable as to establish a broad field for her
enterprises. Her designs were her own, and she served ladies who liked
novel and exclusive patterns. These employments had proved in no wise
detrimental to the social standing of the Bartlett girls. If Rose baked
a cake for a wedding supper, this did not militate in the least against
her eligibility as a guest of the occasion. And likewise Nan could
unfold a napkin she had herself hemstitched for a consideration, without
the slightest fear that any one would make invidious comments upon the
fact.

In the matter of the respective ages of the sisters no stranger was ever
informed of the exact fact, although every one knew. Judge Walters had
established an unchangeable age for both of them. They were, the judge
said, twenty-nine; though as they were not twins, and as he had
persisted in this fallacy for almost a decade, it is difficult to see
how they could both be permanently twenty-nine.

Not all the time of these ladies was spent in cooking and needlework.
Miss Rose was a musician, who played the organ at Center Church and was
usually the sympathetic accompanist at all concerts given by local
talent. And, as though not to be outdone, Miss Nan quietly exercised the
pen conjointly with the needle. Several editors in New York were quite
familiar with the neat backhand of a lady they had never seen who sent
them from an unheard-of town in Indiana the drollest paragraphs, the
most amusing dialogues, and the merriest of jingles. Now and then Nancy
Bartlett's name was affixed to an amusing skit in which various
Montgomery people found their foibles published to the world, though
with a proper discretion, and so amiably that no one could take offense.
With