taken to the cider mills. There was a grove of maples on the top of
Town-House Hill and the Baxters' dooryard was a blaze of brilliant
color. To see Patty standing under a little rock maple, her brown
linsey-woolsey in I one with the landscape, and the hood of her brown
cape pulled over her bright head, was a welcome for anybody. She looked
flushed and excited as she ran up to her sister and said, "Waity,
darling, you've been crying! Has father been scolding you?"

"No, dear, but my heart is aching to-day so that I can scarcely bear
it. A wave of discouragement came over me as I was walking through
the woods, and I gave up to it a bit. I remembered how soon it will be
Thanksgiving Day, and I'll so like to make it happier for you and a few
others that I love."

Patty could have given a shrewd guess as to the chief cause of the
heartache, but she forebore to ask any questions. "Cheer up, Waity," she
cried. "You never can tell; we may have a thankful Thanksgiving, after
all! Who knows what may happen? I'm 'strung up' this afternoon and in
a fighting mood. I've felt like a new piece of snappy white elastic
all day; it's the air, just like wine, so cool and stinging and full
of courage! Oh, yes, we won't give up hope yet awhile, Waity, not until
we're snowed in!"

"Put your arms round me and give me a good hug, Patty! Love me hard,
HARD, for, oh! I need it badly just now!"

And the two girls clung together for a moment and then went into the
house with hands close-locked and a kind of sad, desperate courage in
their young hearts. What would either of them have done, each of them
thought, had she been forced to endure alone the life that went on day
after day in Deacon Baxter's dreary house?

XXIII. AUNT ABBY'S WINDOW

MRS. ABEL DAY had come to spend the afternoon with Aunt Abby Cole and
they were seated at the two sitting-room windows, sweeping the landscape
with eagle eyes in the intervals of making patchwork.

"The foliage has been a little mite too rich this season," remarked Aunt
Abby. "I b'lieve I'm glad to see it thinin' out some, so 't we can have
some kind of an idee of what's goin' on in the village."

"There's plenty goin' on," Mrs. Day answered unctuously; "some of it
aboveboard an' some underneath it."

"An' that's jest where it's aggravatin' to have the leaves so thick and
the trees so high between you and other folks' houses. Trees are good
for shade, it's true, but there's a limit to all things