fit it perfectly. Her strong hands moved back and forth
as if she were used to work and loved it for its own sake; but there
were other things she loved, and the days that summer seemed to her
fuller of life and motion than they had been since she was young. She
had lived alone in this little clearing, backed by pine woods, for over
thirty years, and every sound of sighing or falling branch was familiar
to her, with every resinous tang. Ann thought there was no place on
earth so fitted for a happy life as a curving cross-road where people
seldom came; but her content increased this summer when young Jerry
Hamlin began building a large house across the road, a few rods below
her gate, to live there with his wife. When Ann heard the news, she was
vaguely agitated by it. For a time it seemed as if something were about
to invade her calm. But as the house went up, she began to find she
liked the tapping of hammers and the sound of voices never addressed to
her. When Jerry and his wife came to look at things, as they did nearly
every day, and threw her a hearty word or a smile, she liked them, too,
and it came to her that her old age was to be the brighter for company.

To-day the house was still and empty; she missed the workmen, and
polished the harder, to take off her mind. A heavy step was at the door.
She knew at once who it was: Mrs. John C. Briggs, walking slowly because
her "heft" was great, and blooming with good-will all over her large
face, framed in its thin blond hair.

"Come in," called Ann. "Set right down. I won't leave off my work. I'm
all over this 'ere polishin' stuff."

Mrs. John C. sank into a seat, and devoted the first few moments to
breathing.

"Well," said she, "I heard the workmen was off to-day; so I thought I'd
poke in an' see the new house."

"Yes," said Ann, "they had to wait for mortar. It's goin' to be a nice
pretty place, ain't it?"

"Complete. Well, I should think you'd be rejoiced to have neighbors, all
alone as you be."

Ann smiled.

"I never see a lonesome minute," she said. "There's everything goin' on
round in these woods. The birds an' flyin' things are jest as busy as
the hand o' man, if ye know how to ketch 'em at it. Still, I guess I've
got to the time o' life when I shall kinder enjoy neighbors."

"Ain't you never afraid?"

"I guess there's nothin' round here that's wuss'n myself," returned Ann,
proffering the ancient witticism with a jocose certainty of its worth.
"I