tea-set. Ann sat down
before it and gathered it into her arms as if it were a child. The tears
ran down her cheeks. "To think," she kept saying, "to think he fetched
it back. Only to think on 't!" And while she sat there, very happy with
the tea-set in her lap, she heard a step she knew. She came swiftly to
her feet. Then she put the silver on her bureau in a shining row, and
questioned her face in the glass. The tears were on it still, but that
hardly mattered on a face that smiled so hard. But she did wipe away the
drops with her apron, and then hurried into the kitchen to meet her
visitor. Mrs. John C. was bedraggled from loss of sleep, and defeat sat
upon her shining brow.

"Well, Ann," she said gloomily, "I ain't got any news for ye. He wa'n't
there, arter all, though there'd been a fire an' they found he cooked
himself some eggs. But they're goin' to beat up the woods arter
breakfast, an' if he's above ground he's goin' to be took."

Ann could scarcely sober her smiling mouth.

"You tell 'em it's all right," she announced jubilantly. "Where do you
s'pose I found it? In my bedroom, arter all."

Mrs. John C. regarded her with blighting incredulity. Ann had been
guiltily careless, and yet she expressed no grief over the trouble she
had made. It was beyond belief.

"Ann Barstow," said she, "you don't mean to tell me you had this whole
township up traipsin' the woods all night, an' me without a wink o'
sleep, an' that tea-set in your bedroom, arter all?"

Ann did flush guiltily. Her eyes fell.

"You beseech 'em not to think hard of me," she urged. "I never do put it
in my bedroom,--you know yourself them two places I keep it in,--but
there 'twas."

Mrs. John C. turned majestically to be gone. She spoke with an emphasis
that seemed, even to her, inadequate.

"Well, Ann Barstow, I should think you was losin' your mind."

"Mebbe I be," said Ann, joyously, following her to the door. "Mebbe I
be. But there's my tea-set. I'm terrible pleased."

THE OTHER MRS. DILL

Mrs. Dill and her husband, Myron, grown middle-aged together, and yet,
even through the attrition of the years, no more according in
temperament than at the start, sat on opposite sides of the hearth and
looked at each other, he with calmness, from his invincible authority,
and she fluttering a little, yet making no question but of a dutiful
concurrence. She had bright blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, a thin
face with a nose slightly aq