t she might peer through
them at the Bray girls. "Ain't it a mite airly for sech didoes as them?"

"Why, Maw!" sputtered Lucas, growing red again. "She didn't _go_ for to
do it--no, ma'am!"

"Wa-al! I didn't know. City folks is funny. But come in--do! Mis' Hammon's
nieces, d'ye say? Then you must be John Horrocks Bray's gals--ain't ye?"

"We are," said Lyddy, who had quickly climbed out over the wheel and
now eased down the clumsy bundle which was her sister. "Can you stand,
'Phemie?"

"Ye-es," chattered her sister.

"I hope you can take us in for a little while, Mrs. Pritchett," went on
the older girl. "We are going up to Hillcrest to live."

"Take ye in? Sure! An' 'twon't be the first city folks we've harbored,"
declared the lady, chuckling comfortably. "They're beginnin' to come as
thick as spatters in summer to Bridleburg, an' some of 'em git clear up
this way---- For the land's sake! that gal's as wet as sop."

"It--it was wet water I tumbled into," stuttered 'Phemie.

Mrs. Pritchett ushered them into the big, warm kitchen, where the table
was already set for dinner. A young woman--not so _very_ young, either--as
lank and lean as Lucas himself, was busy at the stove. She turned to
stare at the visitors with near-sighted eyes.

"This is my darter, Sairy," said "Maw" Pritchett. "She taught school two
terms to Pounder's school; but it was bad for her eyes. I tell her to git
specs; but she 'lows she's too young for sech things."

"The oculists advise glasses nowadays for very young persons," observed
Lyddy politely, as Sairy Pritchett bobbed her head at them in greeting.

"So I tell her," declared the farmer's wife. "But she won't listen to
reason. Ye know how young gals air!"

This assumption of Sairy's extreme youth, and that Lyddy would understand
her foibles because she was so much older, amused the latter immensely.
Sairy was about thirty-five.

Meanwhile Mrs. Pritchett bustled about with remarkable spryness to make
'Phemie comfortable. There was a warm bedroom right off the kitchen--for
this was an old-fashioned New England farmhouse--and in this the younger
Bray girl took off her wet clothing. Lyddy brought in their bag and
'Phemie managed to make herself dry and tidy--all but her great plaits
of hair--in a very short time.

She would not listen to Mrs. Pritchett's advice that she go to bed. But
she swallowed a bowl of hot tea and then declared herself "as good as new."

The Bray girls had now t