em, yet easy-loose, too, an' not a bit of trimming on
anything," continued Widow Sprigg with herself, having none other
present with whom to commune; and, as Katharine reappeared, garbed in
the same blue coat and hat, with her short dainty skirts showing below
the coat and her face now glowing with anticipation, remarking aloud:
"Well, your step-ma may not have been any great shakes for
pleasantness, but she did manage to make you look real neat."

"Oh, she had beautiful taste! Everybody said that. When she was dressed
to go out herself she always looked so just right that nobody could tell
what at all she wore; and that, papa said, was the perfection of
dressing. Indeed, do you suppose that my father, an artist, could have
married a person who would offend his eye all the time? Why, what is
that for, Susanna?"

While Katharine had been discussing her stepmother, the widow had been
filling a quaint, old-fashioned, tight covered basket with caraway
cookies and a red apple. The basket had a wreath of flowers painted on
its sides and another on its cover. It was carried by two slender
handles, and was unlike any which Kate had ever seen.

"There, deary, that is a lunch to eat whilst you're in the woods; crisp
air makes a body hungry. Moses'll show you where the spring is, and
there's a gourd dipper hangs by it to drink out of. But take dreadful
care the basket. It was your own pa's meetin' one."

"My father's 'meeting one.' What was that? and how fearfully old it must
be. 'Cause he ran away when he was a little boy, only a year or so older
than I am now."

"He was old enough to have had more sense, and so're you. A
'meetin'-basket' was a basket to take to meetin', course. What else you
suppose? We didn't have two three hours betwixt times, them days. We
went in the morning and stayed till the afternoon service was over. We
took our dinners with us an' et 'em on the graves in the graveyard back
the church. Moses an' Eunice an' me gen'ally took all we needed in the
big willow, but the childern liked their own by themselves. They used to
eat in the hollow below the graveyard, and if any of 'em got too noisy,
or played games wasn't Sabbath ones, one the deacons or head men would
go down an' stop 'em. Oh, childern was raised right in them days, an'
grown folks, too!"

This was all very interesting, and Katharine received the old round
basket, which her dead father's boyish hands must have treated gently,
indeed, to have