ays seemed to be laughing at us, and I think
it must have been her smiles that prevented any romantic attachment. We
walked and talked without any deeper interest than good comradeship.

Mrs. Babcock was famous for her pies and cakes, and Burton always
brought some delicious samples of her skill. As regularly as the clock,
on every Tuesday evening he said, in precisely the same tone, "Well,
now, we'll have to eat these pies right away or they'll spoil," and as I
made no objection, we had pie for luncheon, pie and cake for supper, and
cake and pie for breakfast until all these "goodies" which were intended
to serve as dessert through the week were consumed. By Thursday morning
we were usually down to dry bread and butter.

We simplified our housework in other ways in order that we might have
time to study and Burton wasted a good deal of time at the fiddle,
sawing away till I was obliged to fall upon him and roll him on the
floor to silence him.

I still have our ledger which gives an itemized account of the cost of
this experiment in self board, and its footings are incredibly small.
Less than fifty cents a day for both of us! Of course our mothers,
sisters and aunts were continually joking us about our housekeeping, and
once or twice Mrs. Babcock called upon us unexpectedly and found the
room "a sight." But we did not mind her very much. We only feared the
bright eyes of Ethel and Maude and Carrie. Fortunately they could not
properly call upon us, even if they had wished to do so, and we were
safe. It is probable, moreover, that they fully understood our methods,
for they often slyly hinted at hasty dish-washing and primitive cookery.
All of this only amused us, so long as they did not actually discover
the dirt and disorder of which our mothers complained.

Our school library at that time was pitifully small and ludicrously
prescriptive, but its shelves held a few of the fine old classics,
Scott, Dickens and Thackeray--the kind of books which can always be had
in sets at very low prices--and in nosing about among these I fell, one
day, upon two small red volumes called _Mosses from an Old Manse_. Of
course I had read of the author, for these books were listed in my
_History of American Literature_, but I had never, up to this moment,
dared to open one of them. I was a discoverer.

I turned a page or two, and instantly my mental horizon widened. When I
had finished the _Artist of the Beautiful_, the great Puritan r