st, failed to warm but a few feet of
the spaces around it. A gray-bearded minister in his overcoat was
reading from the pulpit a hymn, as they went in, and a dozen people,
most of them men, were scattered round in the bare pews.

They all looked pleased to see an addition to their number, and some
nodded to Aunt Betty; all stared at the new-comer.

There was no sermon, but a short address, which Marion strove to
remember, that she might repeat it to her father, as having come from
the old pulpit before which he had worshipped as a boy; but, do her
best to be attentive and decorous, her teeth chattered, and the "Amen"
was to her the most interesting part of the services.

The ride home was even colder than the one to the meeting; for a brisk
north-east wind had risen, and came howling down from the mountains in
strong, long gusts that betokened a coming storm.

Dan obstinately refused to move one foot faster than he chose, and
before they reached home they were thoroughly and, indeed, dangerously
benumbed with the cold.

Little thought had they of Thanksgiving, as they clung to the warm
stove and listened to the rising of the wind. It was Marion who first
remembered the day, and looked about for some way of keeping it. Poor,
pinched, half-frozen Aunt Betty had entirely forgotten it.

Now Marion made herself perfectly at home. She found old-fashioned
china that would have been held precious in many houses, decorating
with it the table in a deft and tasteful way that warmed lonely Aunt
Betty's heart, as she watched her, more than the blazing fire could;
and while she worked, she talked, or sang little snatches of college
songs learned at school, which rippled out in her rich voice with a
melody never heard in the old farmhouse before.

It was not long before Aunt Betty came to her help, and such a
bountiful dinner as she had prepared made Marion wish over and over
again that Helen, alone in that large academy building, could have
been there to share it with her.

"Thanksgiving night!" Marion kept saying this to herself over and over
again, as she sat alone with Aunt Betty over the kitchen stove.

A little oblong light stand was drawn up between them, holding a small
kerosene lamp. Not a book but the Bible, and a copy of the Farmer's
Almanac suspended by a string from the corner of the mantel, was to be
seen. Marion, having heard so much of the intelligence of the New
Hampshire farmers, supposed of course there wo