from some defect of vision, stood a little woman, not very
much taller than Joe, whose wrinkled face told she had passed what is
termed the "middle age" of life.

Joe's surprise at seeing this tiny lady, when he had expected to be
confronted by a man, prevented him from speaking at once, and the small
woman asked, with mild curiosity:

"Whose children are you?"

This was a question Joe was not prepared to answer, and he stammered and
stuttered before being able to say:

"I don't know as we're anybody's, ma'am. You see we ain't got any place
to stop in for a day or two, an' thought perhaps a farmer lived here
what would have work we could do to pay for our board."

"Are you hungry, child?" the small woman asked, quickly, and, as it
seemed to Joe, anxiously.

"Not very much now, 'cause we've had a good supper; but we will be in
the mornin', you know."

And Master Plummer interrupted, as he pinched his companion's arm to
reduce him to silence:

"We've been walkin' a good while since then, an' it seems like I was
most starved."

"You poor child! Come right into the house, an' it'll be strange if I
can't find something to eat; though, to tell the truth, I didn't have
real good luck with this week's batch of bread; but if custard pie--"

"_If_ custard pie!" Master Plummer cried, ecstatically. "Why, I'd be
fixed great if I could have some!"

He was following the small woman as he spoke, and, after closing and
barring the outer door, the hostess ushered them into such a kitchen as
they had never seen before.

A spacious room, in which it seemed as if a hundred persons might have
found ample elbow-room, with a yellow, painted floor, on which not a
grain of dirt could be seen, and with numerous odd, stiff-looking
chairs ranged around the sides at regular intervals. At one end an
enormous fireplace, in front of which was a cook-stove actually
glittering with polish, and on the mantel behind it an array of shining
tins.

As seen from the road, in the gloom, the cottage had not appeared even
as large as this kitchen, and because of such fact the boys were more
surprised than they otherwise would have been.

Once in the room, where everything was so cleanly that, as Master
Plummer afterwards expressed it, "it come near givin' him a pain," the
boys stood awkwardly near the door, uncertain as to what might be
expected of them.

"You can sit right here while I get you something to eat," and the
hostess placed two c