s; were it as brown
and sober-coloured as could be, folk remembered it bright and cheerful,
because it was a part of Widow Smith herself.

She kissed Lois on both cheeks, before she rightly understood who the
stranger maiden was, only because she was a stranger, and looked sad
and forlorn; and then she kissed her again, because Captain Holdernesse
commended her to the widow's good offices. And so she led Lois by the
hand into her rough, substantial log-house, over the door of which hung
a great bough of a tree, by way of sign of entertainment for man and
horse. Yet not all men were received by Widow Smith. To some she could
be as cold and reserved as need be, deaf to all inquiries save
one--where else they could find accommodation? To this question she
would give a ready answer, and speed the unwelcome guest on his way.
Widow Smith was guided in these matters by instinct: one glance at a
man's face told her whether or not she chose to have him as an inmate
of the same house as her daughters; and her promptness of decision in
these matters gave her manner a kind of authority which no one liked to
disobey, especially as she had stalwart neighbours within call to back
her, if her assumed deafness in the first instance, and her voice and
gesture in the second, were not enough to give the would-be guest his
dismissal. Widow Smith chose her customers merely by their physical
aspect; not one whit with regard to their apparent worldly
circumstances. Those who had been staying at her house once, always
came again, for she had the knack of making every one beneath her roof
comfortable and at his ease. Her daughters, Prudence and Hester, had
somewhat of their mother's gifts, but not in such perfection. They
reasoned a little upon a stranger's appearance, instead of knowing at
the first moment whether they liked him or no; they noticed the
indications of his clothes, the quality and cut thereof, as telling
somewhat of his station in society; they were more reserved, they
hesitated more than their mother; they had not her prompt authority,
her happy power. Their bread was not so light, their cream went
sometimes to sleep when it should have been turning into butter, their
hams were not always 'just like the hams of the old country,' as their
mother's were invariably pronounced to be; yet they were good, orderly,
kindly girls, and rose and greeted Lois with a friendly shake of the
hand, as their mother, with her arm round the strange