"You'll
find the key of the trunk in the light stand drawer. You see to the
children, and I'll get breakfast on the table. Has Jabe come?"

"No; he sent a boy to milk, 'n' said he'd be right along. You know what
that means!"

Miss Vilda moved about the immaculate kitchen, frying potatoes and
making tea, setting on extra portions of bread and doughnuts and a huge
pitcher of milk; while various noises, strange enough in that quiet
house, floated down from above.

"This is dreadful hard on Samanthy," she reflected. "I don't know 's I'd
ought to have put it on her, knowing how she hates confusion and
company, and all that; but she seemed to think we'd got to tough it out
for a spell, any way; though I don't expect her temper 'll stand the
strain very long."

The fact was, Samantha was banging doors and slatting tin pails about
furiously to keep up an ostentatious show of ill humor. She tried her
best to grunt with displeasure when Gay, seated in a wash-tub, crowed
and beat the water with her dimpled hands, so that it splashed all over
the carpet; but all the time there was such a joy tugging at her
heart-strings as they had not felt for years.

When the bath was over, clean petticoats and ankle-ties were chosen out
of the old leather trunk, and finally a little blue and white lawn
dress. It was too long in the skirt, and pending the moment when
Samantha should "take a tack in it," it anticipated the present fashion,
and made Lady Gay look more like a disguised princess than ever. The
gown was low-necked and short-sleeved, in the old style; and Samantha
was in despair till she found some little embroidered muslin capes and
full undersleeves, with which she covered Gay's pink neck and arms.
These things of beauty so wrought upon the child's excitable nature that
she could hardly keep still long enough to have her hair curled; and
Samantha, as the shining rings dropped off her horny forefinger, was
wrestling with the Evil One, in the shape of a little box of jewelry
that she had found with the clothing. She knew that the wish was a
vicious one, and that such gewgaws were out of place on a little pauper
just taken in for the night; but her fingers trembled with a desire to
fasten the little gold ears of corn on the shoulders, or tie the strings
of coral beads round the child's pretty throat.

When the toilet was completed, and Samantha was emptying the tub, Gay
climbed on the bureau and imprinted sloppy kisses of sincere