fields to tell the news, as if she feared that it might spoil if kept too
long.

Mrs. Jenks, on her way home from the village paused at the gate to ask her
friend, Mrs. Marvin, if she had heard the news, and found that she had
already been told of the contents of the letter, and was glad to hear of
Randy's good luck.

"'Tain't every girl I'd be so glad fer," said Mrs. Marvin, "but Randy's
such a sweet girl I like ter think of this plan which will, no doubt, give
her pleasure."

"So do I," said Matilda Jenks, "an' I fer one shall be on hand ter wish
her joy."

In the little workroom over Barnes' store, Janie Clifton sat humming
cheerfully, her needle flying in and out of the long ruffle which she was
hemming.

"I'm making the people here look better than they ever did before,"
thought Janie, with pardonable pride in her ability. "I make Mrs.
Brimblecom look ever so much less hefty, and I'm sure Mrs. Hodgkins says
she never looked as well in any gown she ever wore, as in the one I
finished for her last week.

"And that skinny woman, now whatever was her name? She looked almost plump
in her new dress last Sunday."

As she stopped to thread her needle, she gave utterance to the thought
which at that moment occupied her mind.

"I b'lieve I'll go over to call on Mrs. Weston to-night, and p'raps she'll
ask me to help her, in fact, I should think she'd _have_ to."

A passing figure caused her to look out of the window.

"Well what a looking piece of headgear!" she remarked. "Lucky I took up
millinery when I was learning dressmakin'. I'll go over to the Weston's
to-night, see if I don't," and she nodded approvingly to her reflection in
the long mirror, a bit of furniture which Janie had felt to be a necessary
adjunct to her rooms.

Even old Mrs. Brimblecom had a word to say.

"I declare, Jabez," she remarked at the dinner table, "I'm reel glad fer
Randy Weston. This doos seem ter be a chance fer her ter see somethin' an'
gain a leetle extry in the way of edication."

"Umph!" remarked Jabez, as he helped himself to a third potato, "'S you
say, it's a chance fer her, an' she's a likely sort er girl,--pass the
salt, will ye?--but I hope it won't poke her head full er notions,--I'll
thank ye fer a biscuit,--so's when she comes home she won't remember who
any of us be."

At the table Jabez Brimblecom's conversation was always a mixture of
gossip and numerous requests for food, so that his wife, accustomed to
this