s sunshiny weather, you know; so we must put up with
it," said Mrs. Hill; "besides, I can mostly find some cool place about
the house; I keep my sewing here on the porch, and, as I bake my bread
or cook my dinner, manage to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from
getting overheated; and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in
the course of the day."

"This _is_ a nice cool place--completely curtained with vines," said
Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again. "They must have cost you a great deal
of pains."

"O, no! no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves; they only
require to be planted. I will save seed for you this Fall, and next
Summer you can have your porch as shady as mine."

"And if I do, it would not signify," said Mrs. Troost; "I never get time
to sit down from one week's end to another; besides, I never had any
luck with vines. Some folks don't, you know."

Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that might be
supposed to move about with little agility, and to find excessive warmth
rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy, cheerful temperament; and
when it rained she tucked up her skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled
about the same as ever, saying to herself, "This will make the grass
grow," or, "It will bring on the radishes," or something else equally
consolatory.

Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who looked as
though she could move about nimbly at any .season; but, as she herself
often said, she was a poor, unfortunate creature, and pitied herself a
great deal, as she was in justice bound to do, for nobody else cared,
she said, how much she had to bear.

They were near neighbors, these good women, but their social
interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent occurrence, for
sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like other folks; sometimes it
was too hot and sometimes it was too cold; and then, again, nobody
wanted to see her, and she was sure she didn't want to go where she
wasn't wanted. Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no
other woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood it was
called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure compensated for
the pains it cost her. It was, however, as she said, a barn of a place,
with half the rooms unfurnished, partly because they had no use for
them, and partly because they were unable to get furniture. So it stood
right in the sun, with no shutters, and n