aking hooked and braided
rugs. Those in the kitchen at Aunt Barbara's were evidently the work of
sister Sarah's industrious fingers. Serena might have left the place of
her birth the week before instead of nearly forty years, if one might
judge by the manner in which she hung her bonnet and shawl on a nail
behind the door and put her gray thread gloves into the table drawer.

Sister Sarah looked like a neat little nun, and limped painfully as she
went about the room. Sometimes she used a crutch, but she seemed as lame
with it as without it, and she was such a brisk little creature in
spirit, and was so little depressed by her misfortune that one felt it
would be unwelcome to express any pity. Betty knew that sometimes the
poor woman suffered a great deal of pain and could not move at all, and
that a neighbor who also lived alone came at those times and stayed with
her for a few weeks. "Sister Sarah ain't one mite lame in her mind,"
Serena said proudly one day, and Betty found this to be the truth. She
did not like to read, however, and told Betty that it was never anything
but a task, except to study geography, and she only had one old
geography, fairly worn to pieces, which she knew by heart, with all its
lists of towns and countries and rivers, the productions and boundaries
and capitals and climatic conditions and wild animals were at her
tongue's end for anybody who cared to hear them. "The old folks used to
think she'd better exercise her memory learning hymns, and Sister Sarah
favored geography," Serena once explained; "but she knows what other
folks knows, and has got a head crammed full o' learning. She never
forgets nothing, whilst I leak by the way, myself, and do' know whether
I know anything or not," she ended triumphantly.

Serena's mind was full of plans that day, and after resting a little
while and hearing the news, she asked Betty whether she would go with
her to a cousin's about a mile away by a pasture path, or whether she
would stay where she was. The path sounded very pleasant, but from the
tone of the invitation it seemed best to remain behind, so she quickly
decided and Serena set forth alone. It was only about eleven o'clock and
she meant to be back by twelve, and dinner was put off half an hour.
Then Serena would have the afternoon clear until it was time to go. The
cousin had seen trouble since the last visit, so it never would do to go
home without seeing her. Sister Sarah and Betty sat by the