felt all day as if
something good was goin' to happen, an' was just sayin' to myself 't
was most sundown now, but I wouldn't let on to Mandany I'd give up
hope quite yet. You see, the scissors stuck in the floor this very
mornin' an' it's always a reliable sign. There, I've got to kiss ye
both again!"

"I don't know where we can all set," lamented sister Mandana. "There
ain't but the one chair an' the bed; t' other chair's too rickety; an'
we've been promised another these ten days; but first they've forgot
it, an' next Mis' Janes can't spare it,--one excuse an' another. I am
goin' to git a stump o' wood an' nail a board on to it, when I can git
outdoor again," said Mandana, in a plaintive voice. "There, I ain't
goin' to complain o' nothin', now you've come," she added; and the
guests sat down, Mrs. Trimble, as was proper, in the one chair.

"We've sat on the bed many's the time with you, 'Beeca, an' talked
over our girl nonsense, ain't we? You know where 't was--in the little
back bedroom we had when we was girls, an' used to peek out at our
beaux through the strings o' mornin'-glories," laughed Ann Bray
delightedly, her thin face shining more and more with joy. "I brought
some o' them mornin'-glory seeds along when we come away, we'd raised
'em so many years; an' we got 'em started all right, but the hens
found 'em out. I declare I chased them poor hens, foolish as 't was;
but the mornin'-glories I'd counted on a sight to remind me o' home.
You see, our debts was so large, after my long sickness an' all, that
we didn't feel 't was right to keep back anything we could help from
the auction."

It was impossible for any one to speak for a moment or two; the
sisters felt their own uprooted condition afresh, and their guests for
the first time really comprehended the piteous contrast between that
neat little village house, which now seemed a palace of comfort, and
this cold, unpainted upper room in the remote Janes farmhouse. It was
an unwelcome thought to Mrs. Trimble that the well-to-do town of
Hampden could provide no better for its poor than this, and her round
face flushed with resentment and the shame of personal responsibility.
"The girls shall be well settled in the village before another winter,
if I pay their board myself," she made an inward resolution, and took
another almost tearful look at the broken stove, the miserable bed,
and the sisters' one hair-covered trunk, on which Mandana was sitting.
But the p