her shoes in their hands. It was a dry evening, but to separate
the twins from those rubber boots would have been next door to an
impossibility.

"There!" exclaimed the lady, as she bade the captain good night, "that's
done; that much is settled anyhow. I'm thankful I ain't got four twins,
instead of two, Cap'n Dott."

Daniel, entering the sale in the ledger, was thankful also. If the
lengthy Blount account had been settled he would have been still more
so.

At nine o'clock he and Sam locked up, extinguished the lamps, and closed
the Metropolitan Store for the night. Crossing the yard to the house,
which he entered by the front door, he found Serena in the sitting-room.
She was reclining upon the couch. She was tired, and out of sorts.

"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, acknowledging her husband's greeting with a
nod, "I am just about worn out, Daniel."

"I should think you would be, Serena. You've been makin' tracks between
here and that lodge room all to-day and yesterday, too. I should think
you'd be about dead."

"It isn't that. I don't mind the work. It's the thanklessness of it all
that breaks me down. I give my time and effort to help the lodge, and
what does it amount to?"

"Well, I--I give in that it don't seem to me to amount to much, 'cordin'
to my figurin'. I don't care much for lodge meetin's and sociables and
such, myself. I'd rather have one evenin' at home with you than the
whole cargo of 'em."

This statement was frank, but it was decidedly undiplomatic. Serena
sniffed contempt.

"Of course you would!" she said. "I don't get a bit of encouragement
here at home, either. I should think you'd be proud to have your
wife the head of the Chapter, presiding at meetings and welcoming the
visiting delegates and--and all."

"I am," hastily. "I'm proud of you, Serena. Always have been, far's that
goes. But I'm just as proud of you here in this sittin'-room as I am
when you're back of that pulpit, poundin' with your mallet and tellin'
Alphy Ann Berry to 'come to order.' Notwithstanding that you're the only
one can make her come--or go, either--unless she takes a notion. Why,"
with a chuckle, "it takes her husband half an hour to make her go home
after meetin's over."

Mrs. Dott did not chuckle.

"You think it's a joke," she said. "I don't. It is the Berry woman and
her kind that make me disgusted. I'm tired of them all. I'm tired of
Trumet. I wish we were somewhere where I had an opportunity; somewhere
wh