. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on
the side of the board opposite Wrinkle, came from the adjoining kitchen
carrying a steaming pot of coffee, which she put by her plate at the
head of the table, and sat down stiffly. The smooth floor of the room
was bare save for a few rugs made of varicolored rags. The walls had a
few cheap pictures on them--brilliant old-fashioned prints in mahogany
frames, and some enlarged photographs in tawdry gilt. The wide hearth of
a deep chimney was whitewashed, as was also the exposed brickwork up to
a crude mantelpiece on which towered a Colonial clock with wooden
wheels, ornamental dial, ponderous weights, and a painted glass door.

Mrs. Henley had not always been so unattractive; her dark eyes were good
and her face held the glow of fine health. She had added to the severity
of her sharp features by the too-elderly manner in which she parted her
hair exactly in the centre of her high brow and brushed it sharply
backward to a scant knot behind. She wore constantly an expression of
one who was well aware of the fact that vast and vague duties to the
dead as well as to the living rested on her and which should be
performed at any cost. She was not usually talkative, and she had few
observations to make this morning. As she nibbled the hot biscuit, upon
which she had daintily spread a bit of butter, she allowed her glance to
rove perfunctorily over the three plates beyond her own. She asked
Wrinkle if his coffee was strong enough, and the gap in the black bonnet
if the mush was too lumpy. From the bonnet came a mumbling content with
the yellow mass into which cream was being slowly stirred with a
quivering hand. Wrinkle seemed more ready in the use of his tongue.

"I hain't got no complaint to make," he said. "Especially sence Alf said
t'other day at the store that coffee was on the rise. I was curious to
see how this batch would sample out. I reckon when the market takes a
jump storekeepers has to take a lower grade to keep customers satisfied
with the price. But it won't work ef they are as good a judge of the
stuff as I am. I parched this lot myself and picked out heaps o' rotten
grains."

"They wasn't rotten," Henley explained, authoritatively. "They was
water-stained by a wet crop-year, that's all. You was throwing away good
coffee."

"Good or not, the chickens wouldn't eat it," argued the tangled head. "I
know, fer I watched 'em. They was hangin' round the kitchen-door and
would r