ilk griddle cakes, each of a
delicious golden brown with crisp edges, buttered, sugared, and stacked
in tempting piles; sliced cold ham and corned beef; a hot dish of
smoked beef and scrambled eggs; two kinds of jelly, and three kinds of
preserves; plain and frosted cake, and last of all the inevitable pie
and cheese.

With all this banquet Mrs. Beasely dared raise a moist eye to the grim
crayon of the departed, and observe:

"I don't know what poor Charles would say to such a smeachin' supper,
if he was alive. Oh, me! it does seem as though I didn't have no heart
for cookery no more since he ain't here ter sample my work. A man's a
gre't spur to a woman in her housekeepin'."

"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated the outspoken Mrs. Scattergood. "I
count 'em a gre't nuisance. If a body didn't have no men folks to
'tend to she could live on bread an' tea--if she so liked.

"Not but what I 'preciate a good layout of vittles like this o' yourn,
Miz' Beasely. But thank the good Lord! I ain't been the slave to no
man's appetite for goin' on fourteen year. An' that's about all men
air, come ter think on it--a pair of muddy boots an' an unquenchable
appetite!"

Mrs. Beasely looked horrified, shaking her widow's cap. "Poor Charles
wasn't nothin' like that," she declared, softly.

"An' I don't s'pose a worse husband ever lived in Poketown," whispered
the pessimistic old lady, when the widow had gone out of the room for
something. "He's been dead ten year, ain't he, 'Rill?"

"About that, mother," admitted the schoolteacher.

"An' I expect ev'ry year she makes more of a saint of him. I declare
for't! sech wimmen oughter be made to marry ag'in. Nothin' but a
second one will cure 'em of their fust!"

Mainly Janice and her friend, the little schoolteacher, were engaged in
their own particular conversation. The girl spent a very pleasant hour
after tea, too, and started home just as dusk was dropping over the
hillside town.

There was a light in Hopewell Drugg's store. He never seemed to have
customers--or so it appeared to Janice. She hesitated a moment to peer
into the gloomy place--more a mausoleum than a store!--and saw Hopewell
leaning against the counter, while Lottie, in her pink sash and white
dress, and the kid boots, sat upon it and leaned against her father
while he scraped out some weird minor chords upon the fiddle.

Marty had come down the lane to the corner of High Street to meet
Janice. Of cour