."

"Pin it up, I say!" Mrs. Hart sniffed. "You'll never get it to look
decent that way. Nothing but making the whole thing plumb over will do
any good. You ought to have got you a new sash to go with the muslin;
weak-eyed as I am, I can see the dirty, faded edges agin the new cloth.
The two don't go together. In war-times it was considered excusable to
botch things that way, but not in this day and time when all
_industrious_ folks can get what's needed."

Dixie looked up regretfully, and a flush of embarrassment climbed into
her fine face as her mother, accompanied by her silent sister, swept
stiffly from the room.

When Carrie Wade had left, after her by no means triumphant call, Dixie
went to her mother, who stood in the yard under an apple-tree, still
with a frown on her really gentle face.

"You oughtn't to have said all that, mother," Dixie said, as she leaned
on the smooth handle of the hoe she was going to take to the field.
"After all, she was in _our_ house."

"And come in it like a yellow-fanged snake with its forked tongue fairly
dripping with poison," was the ready retort. "She come to gloat over
you as she always has since the day you cut her out of that young man.
She knowed you were going to work at home to-day, and she had the
littleness to traipse over here to try to make you feel like you was
missing something awful grand. If I hadn't left the kitchen I wouldn't
have stopped with what I said about her flimsy dress. I'd have told her
that if she'd stay at home more, and keep the holes in her stockings
darned, and her underclothes cleaner, she'd stand a better chance roping
in some fool man. I'm plain and outspoken, and I resent sneaking hints
and false grins as quick as I do slaps. I'm tired o' you doing the way
you are, anyhow. I want you to be like the rest of the girls. What do we
care about owning this farm. Her daddy can't buy a knitting-needle on
time, and yet they live as well as anybody else, and she thinks she is a
grade higher than the rest of us."

"Don't you let it bother you, Muttie," Dixie said, tenderly; indeed, she
was always moved by a demonstration of her mother's love, and her eyes
were moist as she put a caressing hand on the gray locks of the little
woman. "We are going to see it through. When the farm is plumb paid for
we'll make Carrie so sick with our fine doings she'll wish she was
dead."

"It is mighty hard," the old lips quivered, and the gaunt, blue-veined
hand was