at's the frogs. I love to
hear them dearly. It makes me feel both sad and happy, just as the
crickets do that sing under the hearth in our old home at Chicopee."

Jenny's whole heart was in the country, and she could not so well
sympathize with her nervous, sensitive sister, who shrank from country
sights and country sounds. Accidentally spying some tall locust
branches swinging in the evening breeze before the east window, she
again spoke to Jenny, telling her to look and see if the tree leaned
against the house, "for if it does," said she, "and creaks I shan't
sleep a wink to-night."

After assuring her that the tree was all right, Jenny added, "I love
to hear the wind howl through these old trees, and were it not for
you, I should wish it might blow so that I could lie awake and hear
it."

When it grew darker, and the stars began to come out. Jenny was told
"to close the shutters."

"Now, Rose," said she, "you are making half of this, for you know as
well as I, that grandma's house hasn't got any shutters."

"Oh, mercy, no more it hasn't. What _shall_ I do?" said Rose, half
crying with vexation. "That coarse muslin stuff is worse than nothing,
and everybody'll be looking in to see me."

"They'll have to climb to the top of the trees, then," said Jenny,
"for the ground descends in every direction, and the road, too, is so
far away. Besides that, who is there that wants to see you?"

Rose didn't know. She was sure there was somebody, and when Mrs.
Howland came up with one of the nicest little suppers on a small
tea-tray, how was she shocked to find the window covered with her best
blankets, which were safely packed away in the closet adjoining.

"Rose was afraid somebody would look in and see her," said Jenny, as
she read her grandmother's astonishment in her face.

"Look in and see her!" repeated Mrs. Howland. "I've undressed without
curtains there forty years, and I'll be bound nobody ever peeked at
me. But come," she added, "set up, and see if you can't eat a mouthful
or so. Here's some broiled chicken, a slice of toast, some currant
jelly that I made myself, and the swimminest cup of black tea you
ever see. It'll eenamost bear up an egg."

"Sweetened with brown sugar, ain't it?" said Rose sipping a little of
the tea.

In great distress the good old lady replied that she was out of white
sugar, but some folks loved brown just as well.

"Ugh! Take it away," said Rose. "It makes me sick and I don't beli