rl to his M to-day," one will say of a
superscription. "Better write right back and chirk 'im up." Or, "Here's
Her that don't seal her letters good. Tell her about that, why don't
you?" Or, "This Writing's a stranger to me. I'll just wait a minute to
see if birth or death gets out of the envelope.")

As she closed Mary's gate and hurried up the walk, in a keen wind
flowing with little pricking flakes, Jenny was startled to see both
parlour windows open. The white muslin curtains were blowing idly as if
June were in the air. Turning as a matter of course to the path that led
to the kitchen, she was hailed by Mary, who came out the front door with
a rug in her hands.

"Step right in this way," said Mary; "this door's unfastened."

"Forevermore!" Jenny said, "Mary Chavah! What you got your house all
open for? You ain't moving?"

A gust of wind took Mary's answer. She tossed the rug across the icy
railing of the porch and beckoned Jenny into the house, and into the
parlour. And when she had greeted Jenny after the months of her
absence:--

"See," Mary said exultantly, "don't it look grand and empty? Look at it
first, and then come on in and I'll tell you about it."

The white-papered walls of the two rooms were bare of pictures; the
floor had been sparingly laid with rugs. The walnut sofa and chairs, the
table for the lamp, and the long shelves of her grandfather's
books--these were all that the room held. A white arch divided the two
chambers, like a benign brow whose face had long been dimmed away. It
was all exquisitely clean and icy cold. A little snow drifted in
through the muslin curtains. The breath of the two women showed.

"What on earth you done that for?" Jenny demanded.

Mary Chavah stood in the empty archway, the satisfaction on her face not
veiling its pure austerity. She was not much past thirty-three, but she
looked older, for she was gaunt. Her flesh had lost its firmness, her
dressmaking had stooped her, her strong frame moved as if it habitually
shouldered its way. In her broad forehead and deep eyes and somewhat in
her silent mouth, you read the woman--the rest of her was obscured in
her gentle reticence. She had a gray shawl, blue-bordered, folded
tightly about her head and pinned under her chin, and it wrapped her to
her feet.

"I feel like a thing in a new shell," she said. "Come on in where it's
warm."

Instead of moving her dining-room table to her kitchen, as most of Old
Trail Town did