sider him one of her
own boys, Moor tied on an apron and fell to work with Sylvia, laying the
long table which was to receive the coming stores. True breeding is
often as soon felt by the uncultivated as by the cultivated; and the
zeal with which the strangers threw themselves into the business of the
hour won the family, and placed them all in friendly relations at once.
The old lady let them do what they would, admiring everything, and
declaring over and over again that her new assistants "beat her boys and
girls to nothin' with their tastiness and smartness." Sylvia trimmed the
table with common flowers till it was an inviting sight before a viand
appeared upon it, and hung green boughs about the room, with candles
here and there to lend a festal light. Moor trundled a great cheese in
from the dairy, brought milk-pans without mishap, disposed dishes, and
caused Nat to cleave to him by the administration of surreptitious
titbits and jocular suggestions; while Phebe tumbled about in every
one's way, quite wild with excitement; and grandma stood in her pantry
like a culinary general, swaying a big knife for a baton, as she issued
orders and marshalled her forces, the busiest and merriest of them all.

When the last touch was given, Moor discarded his apron and went to join
Mark. Sylvia presided over Phebe's toilet, and then sat herself down to
support Nat through the trying half hour before, as he expressed it,
"the party came in." The twelve years' boy was a cripple, one of those
household blessings which, in the guise of an affliction, keep many
hearts tenderly united by a common love and pity. A cheerful creature,
always chirping like a cricket on the hearth as he sat carving or
turning bits of wood into useful or ornamental shapes for such as cared
to buy them of him, and hoarding up the proceeds like a little miser for
one more helpless than himself.

"What are these, Nat?" asked Sylvia, with the interest that always won
small people, because their quick instincts felt that it was sincere.

"Them are spoons--'postle spoons, they call 'em. You see I've got a
cousin what reads a sight, and one day he says to me, 'Nat, in a book I
see somethin' about a set of spoons with a 'postle's head on each of
'em; you make some and they'll sell, I bet.' So I got gramper's Bible,
found the picters of the 'postles, and worked and worked till I got the
faces good; and now it's fun, for they do sell, and I'm savin' up a lot.
It ai