t by the window
awhile. Just watching people pass would be some amusement, more than she
could find at home.

She was passing the Bisbee place as she made the wish. It was a white
frame house standing near the road, and commanding a view of both
station and store, as well as the approach to the post-office. To her
surprise, some one tapped on the pane of an up-stairs window. Then the
sash flew up, and Mrs. Bisbee called in her thin, fluttering voice:
"Lloyd! Lloyd Sherman! If you're going to the post-office, I wish you'd
ask if there is anything for me. I don't dare set foot out-of-doors this
cold weather."

Then, fearful of draughts, she banged the window down without waiting
for a reply. Lloyd smiled and nodded, glad of an opportunity to be of
service. As she hurried on, she remembered that Miss Allison had spoken
of this gentle little old lady, with her fluttering voice and placid
smile, as one of the most interesting and "Cranfordy" characters in the
Valley, and that, while she never went out in the winter, and seldom in
the summer, except to church, she kept such a sharp eye on the
neighbourhood happenings from the watch-tower of her window that Mrs.
Walton laughingly called it the "Window in Thrums."

It was with the feeling that she was stepping into a story that Lloyd
opened the gate five minutes later and started up the path. A vigorous
tapping on the window above, and a beckoning hand motioned her to come
up-stairs. Hesitating an instant on the porch, she opened the front door
and stepped into the hall.

"Do come up!" called the old lady, plaintively, from the head of the
stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing
must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so
lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself
talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been
in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till
night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that
I see and hear everything."

She ushered Lloyd into a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains,
and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high
four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink
silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a
tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a
summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was gla