p, and she murmured in a different voice: "But I tell
you what I _do_ wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when
she was here. I wish--I had."

"But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your house--and your
children."

"I could've come," retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. "I stayed away because it
weren't cheerful--and that's why I ought to have come. I"--she looked
around--"I've never liked this place. Maybe because it's down in a
hollow and you don't see the road. I don't know what it is, but it's a
lonesome place, and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie
Foster sometimes. I can see now--" She did not put it into words.

"Well, you mustn't reproach yourself," counseled Mrs. Peters. "Somehow,
we just don't see how it is with other folks till--something comes up."

"Not having children makes less work," mused Mrs. Hale, after a silence,
"but it makes a quiet house--and Wright out to work all day--and no
company when he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?"

"Not to know him. I've seen him in town. They say he was a good man."

"Yes--good," conceded John Wright's neighbor grimly. "He didn't drink,
and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he
was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him--."
She stopped, shivered a little. "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone."
Her eye fell upon the cage on the table before her, and she added,
almost bitterly: "I should think she would've wanted a bird!"

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at the cage. "But what do
you s'pose went wrong with it?"

"I don't know," returned Mrs. Peters; "unless it got sick and died."

But after she said it she reached over and swung the broken door. Both
women watched it as if somehow held by it.

"You didn't know--her?" Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler note in her voice.

"Not till they brought her yesterday," said the sheriff's wife.

"She--come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself.
Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and--fluttery.
How--she--did--change."

That held her for a long time. Finally, as if struck with a happy
thought and relieved to get back to every-day things, she exclaimed:

"Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don't you take the quilt in with you?
It might take up her mind."

"Why, I think that's a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale," agreed the sheriff's
wife, as if she too were glad to come into the atmosphere of a simple