l that wise and practical Huldah had
entertained were vetoed, without a thought that this young girl had
been for a year and a half in actual authority in the house, and might
have some feeling of wrong in having a guest of a week overturn her
plans for the next month. But Mrs. Holmes was not one of the kind to
think of that. Huldah was hired and paid, and she never dreamed that
hired people could have any interests in their work or their home other
than their pay and their food. But Huldah was patient, though she
confessed that she had a feeling that she had been rudely "trampled all
over." I suspect she had a good cry at the end of the first day. I can
not affirm it, except from a general knowledge of women.

When John drove up in the buggy that the boys had taken to the depot
for him his first care was to shake hands with the deacon, who was glad
to see him, but could not forbear expressing a hope that he would
"shave that hair off his upper lip." Then John greeted his sister
cordially, and was presented to Miss Dunton. Instead of sitting down,
he pushed right on into the kitchen, where Huldah, in a calico frock
and a clean white apron, was baking biscuit for tea. She had been a
schoolmate of his, and he took her hand cordially as she stood there,
with the bright western sun half-glorifying her head and face.

"Why, Huldah, how you've grown!" was his first word of greeting. He
meant more than he said, for, though she was not handsome, she had
grown exceeding comely as she developed into a woman.

"Undignified as ever!" said Amanda, as he returned to the sitting room.

"How?" said John. He looked bewildered. What had he done that was
undignified? And Amanda Holmes saw well enough that it would not do to
tell him that speaking to Huldah Manners was not consistent with
dignity. She saw that her remark had been a mistake, and she got out of
it as best she could by turning the conversation. Several times during
the supper John addressed his conversation to Huldah, who sat at the
table with the family; for in the country in those days it would have
been considered a great outrage to make a "help" wait for the second
table. John would turn from the literary conversation to inquire of
Huldah about his old playmates, some of whom had gone to the West, some
of whom had died, and some of whom were settling into the same fixed
adherence to their native rocks that had characterized their ancestors.

The next day the ladies co