ell, I 'most wish we'd had her come home," said he at last, clearing
his throat.

"No, you don't either," answered Miss Susan promptly. "Not with this
snow, an' comin' out of a house where it's het up, into cold beds an'
all. Now I'm goin' to git you a mite o' pie an' some hot tea."

She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon
silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for
company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and
she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his
panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began
clearing up.

"I'm worried to death to have him over there all by himself," said she.
"S'pose he should be sick in the night!"

"You'd go over," answered the schoolmaster easily.

"Well, s'pose he couldn't git me no word?"

"Oh, you'd know it! You're that sort."

Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent
anxiety. She came back to her knitting.

"How long has his wife been dead?" asked the schoolmaster.

"Two year. He an' Jenny got along real well together, but sence
September, when she went away, I guess he's found it pretty dull
pickin'. I do all I can, but land! 't ain't like havin' a woman in the
house from sunrise to set."

"There's nothing like that," agreed the wise young schoolmaster. "Now
let's play some more. Let's plan what we'd like to do to-morrow for all
the folks we know, and let's not give them a thing they need, but just
the ones they'd like."

Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the
schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to
sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air.

"Well," said she, "there's old Ann Wheeler that lives over on the
turnpike. She don't want for nothin', but she keeps her things packed
away up garret, an' lives like a pig."

"'Sold her bed and lay in the straw.'"

"That's it, on'y she won't sell nuthin'. I'd give her a house all
winders, so 't she couldn't help lookin' out, an' velvet carpets 't
she'd got to walk on."

"Well, there's Cap'n Ben. The boys say he's out of his head a good deal
now; he fancies himself at sea and in foreign countries."

"Yes, so they say. Well, I'd let him set down a spell in Solomon's
temple an' look round him. My sake! do you remember about the temple?
Why, the nails was all gold. Don't you wish we'd lived in the