oud when I caught sight of them: there was
something very funny in their looks, so jovial and whole-hearted, with
a sober, cheerful pleasure, as if they gave their whole minds to it.
It was like some old gentlemen and ladies who catch the spirit of the
thing, and dance with the rest at a Christmas party.

Miss Hannah West first looked out of the window, and then came to meet
us, looking as if she were glad to see us. Georgie had nothing
whatever to say; but, after I had followed his aunt into the house, he
began to work like a beaver at once, as if it were any thing but a
friendly visit that could be given up to such trifles as conversation,
or as if he were any thing but a boy. He brought the fish and lobsters
into the outer kitchen, though I was afraid our loitering at the
auction must have cost them their first freshness; and then he carried
the axe to the wood-pile, and began to chop up the small white-pine
sticks and brush which form the summer fire-wood at the
farm-houses,--crow-sticks and underbrush, a good deal of it,--but it
makes a hot little blaze while it lasts.

I had not seen Miss Cynthia West, the younger sister, before, and I
found the two women very unlike. Miss Hannah was evidently the capable
business-member of the household, and she had a loud voice, and went
about as if she were in a hurry. Poor Cynthia! I saw at first that
she was one of the faded-looking country-women who have a hard time,
and who, if they had grown up in the midst of a more luxurious way of
living, would have been frail and delicate and refined, and entirely
lady-like. But, as it was, she was somewhat in the shadow of her
sister, and felt as if she were not of very much use or consequence in
the world, I have no doubt. She showed me some pretty picture-frames
she had made out of pine-cones and hemlock-cones and alder-burs; but
her chief glory and pride was a silly little model of a house, in
perforated card-board, which she had cut and worked after a pattern
that came in a magazine. It must have cost her a great deal of work;
but it partly satisfied her great longing for pretty things, and for
the daintiness and art that she had an instinct toward, and never had
known. It stood on the best-room table, with a few books, which I
suppose she had read over and over again; and in the room, beside, were
green paper curtains with a landscape on the outside, and some chairs
ranged stiffly against the walls, some shells, and an