to a livin'
soul, an' I guess it's sort o' heathenish to think, but I'm tired to
death o' fightin' ag'inst poverty, poverty! I s'pose it's there, fast
enough, though we're all so well on 't we don't realize it; an' I'm
goin' to do my part, an' be glad to, while I'm above ground. But I guess
heaven'll be a spot where we don't give folks what they need, but what
they don't."

"There is something in your Bible," began the schoolmaster hesitatingly,
"about a box of precious ointment." He always said "your Bible," as if
church members held a proprietary right.

"That's it!" replied Miss Susan, brightening. "That's what I al'ays
thought. Spill it all out, I say, an' make the world smell as sweet as
honey. My! but I do have great projicks settin' here by the fire alone!
Great projicks!"

"Tell me some!"

"Well, I dunno's I can, all of a piece, so to speak; but when it gits
along towards eight o'clock, an' the room's all simmerin', an' the moon
lays out on the snow, it does seem as if we made a pretty poor spec' out
o' life. We don't seem to have no color in it. Why, don't you remember
'Solomon in all his glory'? I guess 't wouldn't ha' been put in jest
that way if there wa'n't somethin' in it. I s'pose he had crowns an'
rings an' purple velvet coats an' brocade satin weskits, an' all manner
o' things. Sometimes seems as I could see him walkin' straight in
through that door there." She was running a knitting needle back and
forth through her ball of yarn as she spoke, without noticing that some
one had been stamping the snow from his feet on the doorstone outside.
The door, after making some bluster of refusal, was pushed open, and on
the heels of her speech a man walked in.

"My land!" cried Miss Susan, aghast. Then she and the schoolmaster, by
one accord, began to laugh.

But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his
feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the
legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag
he had been carrying.

"I guess I trailed it through some o' the drifts," he remarked. "The
road's pretty narrer, this season o' the year."

"You give us a real start," said Susan. "We thought be sure 't was
Solomon, an' mebbe the Queen o' Sheba follerin' arter. Why, Solon Slade,
you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!"

"Yes, I have," asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man,
possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very so