ailed a little, but rallying, she brought out, "What's the
matter with the Bennetts? The whole kit and b'iling of them came in here
the other day to pester me asking about how I grew my lilies."

"Why, Miss Abigail! You don't pay any more attention to village news!
They've been working in the mills for two years now, and only come home
for two weeks in the summer like everybody else."

The old woman stirred her weighty person wrathfully. "Like everybody else!
Molly, you talk like a fool! As if there was nobody lived here all the
year around!"

"But it's _so!_ I don't know what's coming to Greenford!"

An imperative gesture from the older woman cut her short. "Don't chatter
so, Molly! If it's true, that about the library, we've got to do
something!"

The interview had ended in an agreement from her, after a struggle with
the two passions of her life, to give up the tulip bulbs for which she had
been saving so long, and spend the money for repairing the roof. Miss
Molly, having no money to give, since she was already much poorer than she
could possibly be and live, agreed, according to Miss Abigail's peremptory
suggestion, to give her time, and keep the library open at least during
the afternoons.

"You can do it, Molly, as well as not, for you don't seem to have half the
sewing you used to."

"There's nobody here any more to sew _for_--" began the seamstress
despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the
garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old
woman's jovial blustering, "No such kind of talk allowed in _my_ garden!"

But now, after the second warning, Miss Abigail felt the need of some
cheer for herself as she toiled among the hollyhocks and larkspurs. She
would not let herself think of the significance of the visit of the agent
for the chairs, and she could not force herself to think of anything else.
For several wretched weeks she hung in this limbo. Then, one morning as
she stood gazing at her Speciosums Rubrums without seeing them, she
received her summons to the front. She had a call from her neighbor, Mr.
Edward Horton, whom the rest of the world knows as a sculptor, but whom
Miss Abigail esteemed only because of his orthodox ideas on rose culture.
He came in to ask some information about a blight on his Red Ramblers,
although after Miss Abigail had finished her strong recommendation to use
whale oil soap sprayed, and not hellebore, he still linge