very neat and up to date in everything she puts on, but I can't see
where there is any fashion plate about her. I call her a very sensible
little woman, just the kind of a wife Brother Strong needs."

"Well, I am not disputing how much sense she has, but I still declare
that she has clothes enough now, without our furnishing her any more for
Christmas."

"That's all you know about it!" cried an indignant voice behind them,
and both startled ladies turned hastily around to find a pair of
flashing brown eyes glaring out from under the janitor's old coat in the
corner, "If Mrs. Strong didn't know how to cut and sew, she would be a
pretty ragged looking minister's wife by this time."

Peace crawled out of her warm bed and shook an angry little finger
accusingly at the women, who exclaimed in unison, "Peace Greenfield, how
did you come here, and what do you want?"

"I don't want anything. I clum in the window so's I wouldn't freeze
while I was waiting for Cherry, and I guess I went to sleep. But I heard
what you were saying, and it ain't so, Mrs. Waddler! Mrs. Strong hasn't
got a lot of clothes. The parsonage burned up where they were last time,
and 'most everything they had to wear was burned up, too. That pretty
gray suit she had when they first came here she dyed brown after you
upset a pot of coffee on it at the church supper that night. But the
brown didn't color even, so she ripped it to pieces and dyed it black.
It was all wearing out, too, so she had to put some trimming on the
skirt to cover up the holes. I was over there and saw her do it myself.
She cut over her wedding dress to have something nice to wear last
summer, and all those sep'rate skirts you talk about are some of her
sister's old ones. She hasn't spent a cent for clothes since she bought
her straw hat, and that cost two dollars and a half. Mr. Strong told me
so, himself. He says she's a jewel of a wife and if there were more
women like her in the world there would be more happier homes. That's
just what he said. Ministers don't get paid enough to keep them in
_victuals_, hardly. I know, 'cause I am part of a minister's family, if
papa's church in Pendennis hadn't starved him out so he got sick and had
to stop preaching, he might not be an angel now.

"S'posing you was a minister's wife, how would you like to have folks be
so stingy mean to you? Wouldn't you like nice clothes to wear and good
things to eat? I was there for supper one night last week