nd sent her dollar, and what she got was a
pretty straight insult, I think. They wrote back, 'put an
advertisement like ours in some paper, and get fifty people like
yourself to answer it.' There's a magazine for you!"

Martha looked at him helplessly. "I promised Mrs. Cavers I'd take it.
She's making a little money that way, to get a trip home this
Christmas," she said, locking and unlocking her fingers, the rough,
toil-worn joints of which spoke eloquently in her favour, if the old
man had had eyes to see them.

"You women are too easy," he said. "You'll promise anything. Yer poor
grandmother let a man put a piano in the shed once when it was
raining, and he asked her to sign a paper sayin' it was there, and he
could 'come any time he liked to get it; and, by Jinks! didn't a
fellow come along in a few days wantin' her to pay for it, and
showing her her own name to a note. She wasn't so slow either, for
she purtended she doubted her own writin', and got near enough to
make a grab for it, and tore her name off; but it gave me father such
a turn he advertised her in the paper that he would not be
responsible for her debts, and he never put his name to paper of any
kind afterward. There was a fellow in the old Farmers' Home in
Brandon that asked me father to sign his name in a big book that he
showed up in front of him, and I tell you it was all we could do to
keep the old man from hittin' him. Of course, Martha, if ye didn't
put it down in writin' she can't hold ye; but puttin' it down is the
deuce altogether."

"But I want to give it," Martha said slowly. "I want the magazine,
and I want to help Mrs. Cavers."

"Now, Martha, look a here," the old man said, "you're a real good
girl, and very like my own folks--in the way you handle a hoe yer
just like my poor sister Lizzie that married a peddler against all
our wishes. I mind well, the night before she ran away, how she
kissed me and says she: 'Good-bye, Tommy, don't forgit to shut the
henhouse door,' and in the mornin' she was gone."

Lizzie's bereaved brother wiped his eyes with a red handkerchief, and
looked dreamily into the fire.

Martha, still pleating her apron, stood awkwardly by the table, but
instinctively she felt that the meeting had closed, and the
two-dollar bill was still inside.

She went upstairs to her own room. It was a neat and pretty little
room, and the pride of Martha's heart, but to-night Martha's heart
had nothing in it but a great lonel