own very
much and was being given over to business. There was a narrow hall floor
set in a little distance, with a few steps, and the shop front with the
plain sign of "Jonas Field, Flour, Grain, and Feed." The stairway led to
an upper hall and a very comfortable suite of rooms, where Mrs. Perkins
had come as a young wife, and where she meant to end her days. It was
plenty good enough inside, and she "didn't live in the street."

The best room occupied the whole front and had three windows. Priscilla
had been barely nineteen when she was married, and Hatfield Perkins
quite a bachelor. And, as no children had come to disturb their orderly
habits, they had settled more securely in them year after year.

Next to the parlor was the sleeping chamber. Now, it was the spare room,
though no one came to stay all night who was fine enough to put in it.
The smaller one adjoining she had used since her husband's death. There
was a little tea room, and a big kitchen at the back. Downstairs the
store part had been built out, and on the roof of this the clothes were
dried. Polly always sat out here in pleasant weather, to prepare
vegetables and do various chores. The lot was deep, and at the back were
some fruit trees, and the patch of herbs every woman thought she must
have, and a square of grass for bleaching.

A lighted lamp stood at the head of the stairs. Polly was dozing in the
kitchen. Mrs. Perkins sent her to bed in short order. There were two
rooms and a storage closet upstairs in the gables. One was Polly's. The
other was the guest chamber that was good enough "for the common run of
folks."

The moon was shining in the back windows. Priscilla snuffed out the
candle; there was no use wasting candle light. She sat down in a low
rocker, the only one she owned; and several list seats had been worn out
in it besides the original one of rushes. She had never been really
lonely in the sixty-five years of her life for she had kept busy, and
was replete with old-fashioned methods that made work. She was very
particular. Everything was scrubbed and scoured and swept and dusted and
aired. The dishes were polished until they were lustrous. The knives and
forks and spoons were speckless. There were napery and bedding that had
been laid by for her marriage outfit, and not all worn out yet, though
in the early years she had kept replenishing for possible children.
There was plenty for twenty years to come, and though her people had
bee