aving tried one way, she would essay another.
"Didn't you see Mis' Hilton at the last, or didn't they give it to you?"

Martha unclosed her hand and extended it to them impartially, the
check, face uppermost, held between thumb and finger. They bent forward
to peer. Some rose and looked over the shoulders of the nearer ones, and
glasses were sought and hastily mounted upon noses.

"Well, there," said Mrs. Hanscom, the wife of the grain-dealer who
always stipulated for cash payment before he would deliver a bag at the
barn door, "it ain't bills, as I see."

"It's just as good." Ellen Bayliss looked up from her sewing to throw
this in, with her air of deprecating courtesy. "A check's the same as
money any day. I have two, twice a year, from my stock. All you have to
do is to write your name on the back and turn 'em into the bank."

"Well, all I want to know is, what's it come to?" Lydia Vesey said.
"Course it's just the same as money. I've had checks myself, days past.
Once I done over Miss Tenny's black mohair an' sent it after her, an'
she mailed me back a check,--same day, I guess it was. How much's it
come to, Marthy?"

"See for yourself," said Martha. She laid it, still face upward, on the
table. "It's as much yours as 'tis mine, I guess, if I be treasurer.
Forty-three dollars an' twenty-seven cents."

There was a chorused sigh.

"Well, I call that a good haul," said Ann Bartlett, whose father had
been sexton for thirty-eight years, and who, in consequence, looked upon
herself as holding some subtly intimate relation with the church, so
that when the old carpet was "auctioned off" she insisted on darning the
breadths before they were put up for sale. "What money can do! Just one
evenin', an' them few folks dressed up to kill an' payin' that in for
their ice-cream an' tickets at the door."

"We made the ice-cream," said Martha, as one stating a fact to be justly
remembered.

"We paid ourselves in, too," said Lydia sharply. "I guess our money's
good as anybody's, an' I guess it'll count up as quick an' go as fur."

"Course it will," said Martha, in a mollifying tone. "But 'tis an easy
way of makin' a dollar, just as Ann says. There they got up a
fancy-dress party an' enjoyed themselves, an' it's brought in all this.
'Twa'n't hard work for 'em. 'Twas a kind o' play."

"Well, I guess they did enjoy it," said Mrs. Pray gloomily. She had
settled her glasses on her nose again, and now, with her finger, went
fol