sts, and placed chairs for them,
courteously, steeped them a cup of pale and fragrant tea, and served
them with little cakes. Though her manner was so quiet and so kind, the
women were shy before her. She, turning to one and then the other, asked
questions in her quaint way.

"You have children, have you not?"

Both of them had.

"Ah," she cried, clasping those slender hands, "but you are very
fortunate! Your little ones,--what are their ages?"

They told her, she listening smilingly.

"And you nurse your little babes--you nurse them at the breast?"

The modest women blushed. They were not used to speaking with such
freedom. But they confessed they did, not liking artificial means.

"No," said the lady, looking at them with a soft light in her eyes, "as
you say, there is nothing like the good mother Nature. The little ones
God sends should lie at the breast. 'Tis not the milk alone that
they imbibe; it is the breath of life,-it is the human magnetism, the
power,-how shall I say? Happy the mother who has a little babe to hold!"

They wanted to ask a question, but they dared not--wanted to ask a
hundred questions. But back of the gentleness was a hauteur, and they
were still.

"Tell me," she said, breaking her reverie, "of what your husbands do.
Are they carpenters? Do they build houses for men, like the blessed
Jesus? Or are they tillers of the soil? Do they bring fruits out of this
bountiful valley?"

They answered, with a reservation of approval. "The blessed Jesus!" It
sounded like popery.

She had gone from these brief personal matters to other things.

"How very strong you people seem," she had remarked. "Both your men
and your women are large and strong. You should be, being appointed to
subdue a continent. Men think they choose their destinies, but indeed,
good neighbors, I think not so. Men are driven by the winds of God's
will. They are as much bidden to build up this valley, this storehouse
for the nations, as coral insects are bidden to make the reefs with
their own little bodies, dying as they build. Is it not so?"

"We are the creatures of God's will, I suppose," said one of her
visitors, piously.

She had given them little confidences in return.

"I make my bread," she said, with childish pride, "pray see if you
do not think it excellent!" And she cut a flaky loaf to display its
whiteness. One guest summoned the bravado to inquire,--

"Then you are not used to doing housework?"

"I?" s