ckings to the
public view, whether on or off the person,"--so she said.

The four Corner House girls felt thankful to the queer old woman, who
was really no relation to them at all, but who accepted all their bounty
and attentions as though they were hers by right.

Indeed, at the time when there seemed some doubt as to whether Mr.
Howbridge could prove for the Kenway girls a clear title to Uncle
Peter's property, Aunt Sarah had furnished the necessary evidence, and
sent away the claimant from Ipsilanti.

There was, too, a soft side to Aunt Sarah's character; only, like the
chestnutburr, one had to get inside her shell to find it. If one of the
children was ill, Aunt Sarah was right there with the old fashioned
remedies, and although some of her "yarb teas" might be nasty to take,
they were efficacious.

Then, she was always knitting, or embroidering, something or other for
the girls. Now that there was plenty of money in the family purse, she
ordered materials just as she pleased, and knit jackets, shawls,
mittens, and "wristlets."

She was a very grim lady and dressed very plainly; although she never
said so, she liked to have the girls sit with her at their sewing. She
took infinite pains to teach them to be good needle-women, as her mother
had doubtless taught her.

So the chief present the girls bought this Christmas for Aunt Sarah was
a handsome sewing table, its drawers well supplied with all manner of
threads, silks, wools, and such like materials.

This the Kenway sisters had all "chipped in" to purchase, and the table
was smuggled into the house and hidden away in one of the spare rooms,
weeks before Christmas. The girls had purchased a new dress for Mrs.
MacCall, and had furnished out Uncle Rufus from top to toe in a suit of
black clothes, with a white vest, in which he could wait at table on
state and date occasions, as well as wear to church on Sundays.

There were, of course, small individual presents from each girl to these
family retainers, and to Aunt Sarah. The stockings bulged most
delightfully in the dining-room when they trooped down to breakfast on
Christmas morning.

Tess and Dot could scarcely eat, their eyes were so fixed upon the
delightfully knobby bundles piled under each of their stockings on the
hearth. Agnes declared Tess tried to drink her buckwheat cakes and eat
her coffee, and that Dot was in danger of sticking her fork into her eye
instead of into her mouth.

But the meal