's pot-roast. "I tell yew,
Tommy," regaining her accustomed confiding amiability, as she lifted the
corner of her apron to wipe her eyes, "Miss Ellie will feel some kind o'
bad, tew. Yer know me an' her an' Angy all went ter school tergether,
although Miss Ellie is so much younger 'n the rest o' us that we call
her the baby. Here! Where--"

But he was gone. Sighing heavily, the matron put the meat in the
ice-box, and then made her slow, lumbering way into the front hall, or
community-room, where the sisters were gathered in a body to await the
new arrival.

"Waal, say!" she supplemented, after she had finished telling her
pitiably brief story, "thar's trouble ernough ter go 'round, hain't
thar?"

Aunt Nancy Smith, who never believed in wearing her heart on her sleeve,
sniffed and thumped her cane on the floor.

"Yew young folks," she affirmed, herself having seen ninety-nine
winters, while Abigail had known but a paltry sixty-five, "yew allers go
an' cut yer pity on the skew-gee. I don't see nothin' ter bawl an'
beller erbout. I say that a'ny man what can't take kere o' himself, not
ter mention his wife, should orter go ter the poorhouse."

But the matriarch's voice quavered even more than usual, and as she
finished she hastily bent down and felt in her deep skirt-pocket for her
snuff-box.

Now the Amazonian Mrs. Homan, a widow for the third time, made sturdy
retort:

"That's jest like yew old maids--always a-blamin' the men. Yew kin jest
bet I never would have let one of my husbands go ter the poorhouse. It
would have mortified me dretful. It must be a purty poor sort of a
woman what can't take care of one man and keep a roof over his head.
Why, my second, Oliver G., used ter say--"

"Oh!" Miss Ellie wrung her hands, "can't we do somethin'?"

"I could do a-plenty," mourned Miss Abigail, "ef I only had been savin'.
Here I git a salary o' four dollars a month, an' not one penny laid
away."

"Yew fergit," spoke some one gently, "that it takes consid'able ter
dress a matron proper."

Aunt Nancy, who had been sneezing furiously at her own impotence, now
found her speech again.

"We're a nice set ter talk erbout dewin' somethin'--a passel o' poor ole
critters like us!" Her cackle of embittered laughter was interrupted by
the low, cultivated voice of the belle of the Home, "Butterfly Blossy."

"We've _got_ to do something," said Blossy firmly.

When Blossy spoke with such decision, every one of the sisters