moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more
homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth
were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both
floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there
above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,--for she
had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her
shiftless father, when put to his trumps, had sold to adorn the halls of
some upstart with forefathers.

"Tommy," said she softly, when little Sarah slept, "can you tell me what
w-a-t-e-r spells?"

"No," said the stolid Tommy.

"Is it dark in there, Tommy?" asked she, half relenting, and yet half
wishing to excite his fears enough to conquer his obduracy.

"I don't know," answered Tommy, quite willing to converse, "I've got my
eyes shut."

"Very well," said Helen, and went on with her low lullaby, which Tommy
stoutly, but ineffectually, attempted to join. The wind was beginning to
rise and clatter at the casements, and sing its own tune round the
gable-corner; the dark had quite fallen, and the room was gloomy and
vivid by turns with the fitful flashes of the firelight.

"Nelly," said Tommy, wheedlingly, and shaking the lock of the closet, "I
wish you'd give me some. I'm real sirsty."

"Some what?" asked Helen, very willing to compromise.

"Some w-a-t-e-r. I'm so sirsty."

"Pronounce it, Tommy, and you shall come out and have some."

"I don't know how to," was the atrocious answer.

"And some chicken-broth as well as some water, if you'll only tell me
what those five letters spell."

But there was nothing but silence in reply from Tommy, and Helen resumed
her song.

"It's real damp in here," said Tommy pretty soon, beginning to cough
furiously. "I'm getting a stiff neck."

"You have one already," said Helen; and, laying little Sarah down, she
went to put on her apron, to attend to her stew, to bring in the cloth
and the tray of dishes, and to spread the supper-table in the warm
room,--set out near the fire, the worn white linen, the sparse silver,
the rare and gay old china, of which they used every day what would have
decked out a modern drawing-room, all clean and glittering as if viands
were various and plentiful as color and sparkle. That all done, again
Cinderella sat down before the fire.

"'Elen!" said Tommy then in a muffled tone, having given the door
another premonitory shake, a