certain days, was Jerusha, who did the heavy work and then went home
nights; with Jerusha it was plain "Mat." Then there was Miss Mary down
at the school which Martha Matilda had attended at the time when
loving mother-fingers "fixed her up like other girls," and Miss Mary,
when speaking to the child "running wild upon the mountain side,"
always said "dear." But Martha Matilda had dropped out of the
day-school and out of the Sunday-school. Somehow she had grown tired
of trying to keep shoe-strings from breaking, and aprons from being
torn, and if she was just home with Towser, such things did not
matter; as to her going to school, her father did not seem to care.
"Guess there's no hurry 'bout filling so small a head," he would
sometimes say when Jerusha pleaded for school with Martha's eyes
assenting.

So now, Martha Matilda stood listening to the chiming of the Easter
bells and seemed undecided as to her next move.

"I know Miss Mary's lily is there, and it's got five blossoms on this
year; she told father so down at the store. And such a lot of
evergreen as the girls did take in yesterday!" Her face was still
turned in the direction of the church on the outskirts of the scraggly
mountain town, and whose spire pricked through the dark green pinons
surrounding it. "I ain't fixed--I ain't never fixed now." And she
glanced down along her unbuttoned jacket, over the faded delaine
dress, to her shoes tied with strings held together by countless
knots. "It seems awful lonesome to be home on Easter."

She pulled out some brown woolen gloves from the pocket of her jacket,
and drew them on slowly. Her fingers crowded out through numerous
holes, but she pushed them back, pulling the ends of the gloves
further up, and drawing down the sleeves of the jacket in an attempt
to leave as small a part of the woolen gloves in sight as possible.
"Father wouldn't care--he never cares." She buttoned her jacket
hastily, settled her brown hat a little straighter, ran fleetly along
the road leading toward the church, and breathlessly climbed the rude
steps, together with a half-dozen other girls, just as the bell threw
down its last sweet tone.

Some of the girls going up the church steps nodded good-humoredly to
Martha Matilda, but others pushed by too eager to notice. Martha did
not follow the girls far up the aisle of the church, but dropped down
into an empty pew near the door. How spicy and nice it did smell! She
reached up so that s