ose with the birds in
that rural community. But often I was scarcely more than half awake at
breakfast; Ellen and Wealthy, too, were in much the same case.

On one of these early mornings when I had been there about three weeks,
our drowsiness at the breakfast table was dispelled by the arrival of
two early callers--each on business.

Gram was pouring the coffee, when the outer door opened and a tall,
sallow, dark-complexioned woman entered, the same whom I had met on the
Meadow Brook bridge, while leading Little Dagon. She wore a calico gown
and sun-bonnet, and may have been fifty years of age; and she walked in
quite as a matter of course, saying, "How do you do, Joseph, how do you
do, Ruth?" to the Old Squire and Gram.

"Why, how do you do, Olive?" said Gram, but not in the most cordial of
tones. "Will you have some breakfast with us?"

"I have been to breakfast, Ruth," replied this visitor, throwing back
her sun-bonnet and thereby displaying a forehead and brow that for
height and breadth was truly Websterian. "I came to get my old dress
that I left here when I cleaned house for you last spring, and I should
also like that dollar that's owing me."

"Olive," rejoined Gram severely, "I do not owe you a dollar."

"Ruth," replied the caller with equal severity, "you do owe me a
dollar."

She proceeded, as one quite familiar in the house, to the kitchen closet
and took therefrom an old soiled gingham gown.

"Olive," said the Old Squire, "are you quite sure that there is a dollar
due you here?"

"Joseph," replied the lofty-browed woman, "do you think I would say so,
if I did not know it?"

"No, Olive, I don't think you would," said the Old Squire.

"It's no such thing, Olive," cried Gram, looking somewhat heated. "I
always paid you up when you cleaned house for me and when you spun for
me."

"Always but that one time, Ruth. Then you did not--into a dollar,"
replied the sallow woman, positively.

An argument ensued. It appeared that the debated dollar was a matter of
three or four years standing. There was little doubt that both were
equally honest in their convictions concerning it, pro and con. Still,
they were a dollar apart, somehow. Furthermore, it came out, that
"Olive" when she felt periodically poor, or out of sorts, was in the
habit of calling and dunning Gram for that dollar, much to the old
lady's displeasure.

The Old Squire sat uneasily and listened to the talk, with growing
disfavor. At las