we were never expected to use,--and we
found the sisters down cellar, with shawls over their heads, feeding
their hens through the cellar window, opening on the glassed-in coop
under the porch.

In Friendship it is a point of etiquette for a morning caller never to
interrupt the employment of a hostess. So we obeyed the summons of the
Liberty sisters to "come right down"; and we sat on a firkin and an
inverted tub while Calliope told her plan and the hens fought for
delectable morsels.

"My grief!" said Libbie Liberty, tartly, "where you goin' to _get_ your
sick an' poor?"

Mis' Viny, balancing on the window ledge to reach for eggs, looked back
at us.

"Friendship's so comfortable that way," she said, "I don't see how you
can get up much of anything."

And little Miss Lucy, kneeling on the floor of the cellar to measure
more feed, said without looking up:--

"You know, since mother died we ain't never done anything for holidays.
No--we can't seem to want to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas or
like that."

They all turned their grave lined faces toward us.

"We want to let the holidays just slip by without noticin'," Miss Viny
told us. "Seems like it hurts less that way."

Libbie Liberty smiled wanly.

"Don't you know," she said, "when you hold your hand still in hot water,
you don't feel how hot the water really is? But when you move around in
it some, it begins to burn you. Well, when we let Thanksgiving an'
Christmas alone, it ain't so bad. But when we start to move around in
'em--"

Her voice faltered and stopped.

"We miss mother terrible," Miss Lucy said simply.

Calliope put her blue mitten to her mouth, but her eyes she might not
hide, and they were soft with sympathy.

"I know--I know," she said. "I remember the first Christmas after my
mother died--I ached like the toothache all over me, an' I couldn't bear
to open my presents. Nor the next year I couldn't either--I couldn't
open my presents with any heart. But--" Calliope hesitated, "that second
year," she said, "I found somethin' I could do. I saw I could fix up
little things for other folks an' take some comfort in it. Like mother
would of."

She was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the three lonely
figures in the dark cellar of their house.

"Your mother," she said abruptly, "stuffed the turkey for a year ago the
last harvest home."

"Yes," they said.

"Look here," said Calliope; "if I can get some poor folks toge