les in their hands.

"Aunt Mercy will let me carry your bundles a part of the way for you;
shall I?"

"No, indeed," said Ruth, in a mild voice; "there's no heft in them;
they are mites to carry."

"Besides," chimed Sally, "you couldn't be trusted with them."

"Are they worth anything?" I inquired, noticing then that both wore
better dresses, and that the bundles contained their shop-gowns.

"What made you pinch the moltee's tail?" asked Sally. "If you pinched
my cat's tail, I would give you a sound whipping."

"How could she, Sally," said Ruth, "when our cat's tail is cut short
off?"

"For all the world," remarked Sally, "that's the only way she can
be managed. If things are cut off, and kept out of sight, or never
mentioned before her, she may behave very well; not otherwise."

"Good-by, Miss Ruth, and Sally, good-by," modulating my voice to
accents of grief, and making a "cheese."

They retreated with a less staid pace than usual, and I sought Aunt
Mercy, who was preparing the Sunday's dinner. Twilight drew near, and
the Sunday's clouds began to fall on my spirits. Between sundown and
nine o'clock was a tedious interval. I was not allowed to go to bed,
nor to read a secular book, or to amuse myself with anything. A dim
oil-lamp burned on the high shelf of the middle room, our ordinary
gathering-place. Aunt Mercy sat there, rocking in a low chair; the
doors were open, and I wandered softly about. The smell of the
garden herbs came in faintly, and now and then I heard a noise in
the water-butt under the spout, the snapping of an old rafter, or
something falling behind the wall. The toads crawled from under the
plantain leaves, and hopped across the broad stone before the kitchen
door, and the irreverent cat, with whom I sympathized, raced like mad
in the grass. Growing duller, I went to the cellar door, which was in
the front entry, opened it, and stared down in the black gulf, till
I saw a gray rock rise at the foot of the stairs which affected my
imagination. The foundation of the house was on the spurs of a great
granite bed, which rose from the Surrey shores, dipped and cropped
out in the center of Barmouth. It came through the ground again in the
woodhouse, smooth and round, like the bald head of some old Titan, and
in the border of the garden it burst through in narrow ridges full
of seams. As I contemplated the rock, and inhaled a moldy atmosphere
whose component parts were charcoal and potatoes, I hea