lish question, "it's jest a town meetin', same as any
other. We're goin' to take action on the Old Folks' Home."

"Take action?" repeated old Mis' Meade. "Oh, that's it, is it? Well,
Rita 'n' I'll stay to home an' take action on the 'Master Minds o'
History.' This is as good a night as any. Mebbe there's a few womenfolks
in there--enough for pepper 'n' salt--if they ain't bound for town
meetin'."

Elihu drew the long breath which is the due of happily completed toil.
He began to roll up his plans. Amarita ran to him and looked over his
shoulder.

"You got 'em done?" she asked.

The red in her cheeks had heightened. Her voice came huskily. Old Mis'
Meade glanced at her, a sharp and quick survey. Elihu indulgently
unrolled his paper and spread it on the desk.

"Yes," said he, "I got 'em done."

"O Elihu!" breathed his wife. She bent above the page, and in the fever
of her interest seemed to pounce on it and scurry over it. "You goin' to
show it to the town meetin'?"

"Course I be," said Elihu, with a modest pride. "That's what I made it
for."

Amarita straightened.

"Well," said she. Her voice was hard through what might have been an
accepted purpose. "You may as well shave you. We'll have supper early."

Supper was a silent meal that night. Elihu was pondering on his triumph
as a valuable citizen, and what Amarita thought no one could at that
moment have foretold. She did not eat, but she drank her tea in hasty
swallows, and burned her mouth with it. That, the old lady guessed, was
why the tears came once or twice into her eyes. Amarita, her
mother-in-law judged, had been staying indoors too much through the
snowy weather, while Elihu worked on his plans. There had been no
sleigh-rides, only the necessary driving to the street.

Old Mis' Meade had a little scheme in view, and now she brought it
forth; it was a species of compensation for stay-at-homes during the
absence of their lawful head for his two or three hours of civic duty.

"What if you should bring in a good big knot 'fore you go," she adjured
him, "an' Rita 'n' I'll have us a fire in the fireplace. I dunno why,
but seems if I didn't want to set in the kitchen to-night. Then by the
time you come home there'll be a good bed o' coals, an' you can toast
your feet 'fore you go to bed."

There was a whirling half-hour of preparation, while old Mis' Meade
washed the supper dishes and Amarita flew light-footedly about from
kitchen to bedroom to get he