l work" for the overburdened mother, and were to gladden
her unexpecting eyes, as such store only can gladden the anxious family
manager who feels the changeful, shortening days come treading, with
their speedy demands, upon the very skirts of long, golden sunshiny
August hours.

Susan and Martha Josselyn felt, on their part, as only busy workers feel
who fasten the last thread, or dash a period to the last page, and turn
around to breathe the breath of the free, and choose for once and for a
while what they shall do. The first hour of this freedom rested them
more than the whole six weeks that they had been getting half-rest, with
the burden still upon their thought and always waiting for their hands.
It was like the first half-day to children, when school has closed and
books are brought home for the long vacation. All the possible delight
of coming weeks is distilled to one delicious drop, and tasted then.

"It's 'none of my funeral,' I know," Sin Saxon said to Miss Craydocke.
"I'm only an eleventh-hour helper; but I'll come in for the holiday
business, if you'll let me; and perhaps, after all, that's more in my
line."

Everything seemed to be in her line that she once took hold of. She had
little private consultations with Miss Craydocke. "It's to be your party
to Feather-Cap, but it shall be my party to Minster Rock," she said.
"Leave that to me, please. Now the howl's off my hands, I feel equal to
anything.'"

Just in time for the party to Minster Rock, a great basket and box from
home arrived for Sin Saxon. In the first were delicious early peaches,
rose-color and gold, wrapped one by one in soft paper and laid among
fine sawdust; early pears, also, with the summer incense in their
spiciness; greenhouse grapes, white and amber and purple. The other held
delicate cakes and confections unknown to Outledge, as carefully put up,
and quite fresh and unharmed. "Everything comes in right for me," she
exclaimed, running back and forth to Miss Craydocke with new and more
charming discoveries as she excavated. Not a word did she say of the
letter that had gone down from her four days before, asking her mother
for these things, and to send her some money; "for a party," she told
her, "that she would rather give here than to have her usual summer
_fete_ after her return."

"You quite eclipse and extinguish my poor little doings," said Miss
Craydocke, admiring and rejoicing all the while as genuinely as Sin
herself.