h bad pies and stuff day after day when they ought to have good
wholesome things for lunch. I actually ache to go and give each one of
'em a nice piece of bread-and-butter or one of our big cookies," said
kind Miss Mehitable Plummer, taking up her knitting after a long look at
the swarm of boys pouring out of the grammar school opposite, to lark
about the yard, sit on the posts, or dive into a dingy little shop close
by, where piles of greasy tarts and cakes lay in the window. They would
not have allured any but hungry school-boys, and ought to have been
labelled Dyspepsia and Headache, so unwholesome were they.

Miss Jerusha looked up from her seventeenth patchwork quilt, and
answered, with a sympathetic glance over the way,--

"If we had enough to go round I'd do it myself, and save these poor
deluded dears from the bilious turns that will surely take them down
before vacation comes. That fat boy is as yellow as a lemon now, and no
wonder, for I've seen him eat half a dozen dreadful turnovers for one
lunch."

Both old ladies shook their heads and sighed, for they led a very quiet
life in the narrow house that stood end to the street, squeezed in
between two stores, looking as out of place as the good spinsters would
have done among the merry lads opposite. Sitting at the front windows
day after day, the old ladies had learned to enjoy watching the boys,
who came and went, like bees to a hive, month by month. They had their
favorites, and beguiled many a long hour speculating on the looks,
manners, and probable station of the lads. One lame boy was Miss
Jerusha's pet, though she never spoke to him, and a tall bright-faced
fellow, who rather lorded it over the rest, quite won Miss Hetty's old
heart by helping her across the street on a slippery day. They longed to
mend some of the shabby clothes, to cheer up the dull discouraged ones,
advise the sickly, reprove the rude, and, most of all, feed those who
persisted in buying lunch at the dirty bake-shop over the way.

The good souls were famous cooks, and had many books full of all manner
of nice receipts, which they seldom used, as they lived simply and saw
little company. A certain kind of molasses cookie made by their honored
mother,--a renowned housewife in her time,--and eaten by the sisters as
children, had a peculiar charm for them. A tin box was always kept full,
though they only now and then nibbled one, and preferred to give them
away to poor children, as the