n the minister was called
out to tea. It was an odd little room, between the study and the
kitchen, where they took tea; not big enough for anything but the table
and a convenient passage round it. Two little windows looked out over a
pleasant field, part of which was cultivated as the parsonage garden,
and beyond that, to white palings and neat houses, clustering loosely
in pretty village fashion. Among them, facing on the street which
bordered the parsonage and church grounds at the back, Matilda could
see the brown front of the Academy, where Norton Laval went to school;
and trees mingled their green tops with the house roofs everywhere. The
sun was going down in the bright western sky, which was still beyond
all this, and nothing disagreeable was within sight at all.

"What are you thinking about, Tilly, that you look so hard out of my
windows?" the minister asked.

"Nothing, Mr. Richmond. At least--I was thinking, whether you knew
Norton. Norton Laval."

"He comes to the Sunday-school, I think. No, I do not know him very
well. Do you?"

"Oh yes."

"Is he a nice fellow?"

"He is very nice, Mr. Richmond."

"Does he love the Bible as well as you do?"

"I don't think he knows much about it, Mr. Richmond," Matilda answered,
looking wistful.

"If he is a friend of your's, cannot you help him?"

"I do try," said Matilda. "But, Mr. Richmond, you know a boy thinks he
knows about things better than I do, or than any girl does."

Mr. Richmond smiled.

"Besides, I can't see him now," Matilda added. "I have no chance." And
a cloud came over her face.

"Miss Redwood," said the minister, "do you think you can manage a
certain business in Lilac Lane which Matilda had a mind to entrust to
you? I suppose you have been consulting about it."

"Does Mr. Richmond think it'll do much good?" was the housekeeper's
rejoinder.

"Do I think what will do good?"

"Gettin' a new bedstead and fixin's for Sally Eldridge."

"I don't know what 'fixin's' are, in this connection," said the
minister. "I have heard of 'light bread and chicken fixings,' at the
South."

"The bread and the chickens are comin' too, for all I know," said the
housekeeper. "I mean sheets, and coverlets, and pillows, and decent
things. She hain't none now."

"I should think she would sleep better," said the minister, gravely.

"Had this child ought to spend her little treasures for to put that old
house in order? It's just sheddin' peas into a basket