admitted, "and
would begin to talk his nonsense; but Comstock wouldn't ask nothin'
better than to pitch such a feller out, especially if he should sarce
the little gals. They were good little gals, and Delia set store by
'em."

When Stephen and his sister went back that night to their kind
hostesses, Miss Martha and Miss Amy, the soft hearts of those dear old
ladies were melted in an instant by the story of Gerty's courage and
self-sacrifice. They had lived peacefully all their lives in that
motherly old house by the bay-side, where successive generations had
lived before them. The painted tiles around the open fire looked as if
their fops and fine ladies had stepped out of the Spectator and the
Tatler; the great mahogany chairs looked as hospitable as when the
French officers were quartered in the house during the Revolution, and
its Quaker owner, Miss Martha's grand-uncle, had carried out a seat
that the weary sentinel might sit down. Descended from one of those
families of Quaker beauties whom De Lauzun celebrated, they bore the
memory of those romantic lives, as something very sacred, in hearts
which perhaps held as genuine romances of their own. Miss Martha's
sweet face was softened by advancing deafness and by that gentle,
appealing look which comes when mind and memory grow a little dimmer,
though the loving nature knows no change. "Sister Amy says," she meekly
confessed, "that I am losing my memory. But I do not care very much.
There are so few things worth remembering!"

They kept house together in sweet accord, and were indeed trained in
the neat Quaker ways so thoroughly, that they always worked by the same
methods. In opinion and emotion they were almost duplicates. Yet the
world holds no absolute and perfect correspondence, and it is useless
to affect to conceal--what was apparent to any intimate guest--that
there was one domestic question on which perfect sympathy was wanting.
During their whole lives they had never been able to take precisely the
same view of the best method of grinding Indian meal. Miss Martha
preferred to have it from a wind-mill; while Miss Amy was too
conscientious to deny that she thought it better when prepared by a
water-mill. She said firmly, though gently, that it seemed to her "less
gritty."

Living their whole lives in this scarcely broken harmony by the margin
of the bay, they had long built together one castle in the air. They
had talked of it for many an hour by their e