. I'll warrant, now, Diana, you haven't had the ashes
cleared out of that stove for a week."

"Why, mother?"

"It smokes. It always does smoke when it gets full of ashes; and it
never smokes when it ain't."

"There is no smoke _here_, surely."

"I smell it. I can smell anything there is about. I don't know whatever
there was in the house last night that smelled like coffee; but I
a'most thought there was somebody makin' it down-stairs. I smelled it
as plain as could be. If I could ha' got into my shoes, I believe I
would ha' come down to see, just to get rid of the notion, it worried
me so. It beats me now, what it could ha' been."

Diana turned away with the cups she had been wiping, that she might not
show her face.

"Don't you never have your ashes took up, Diana?" cried Mrs. Starling,
who, when much exercised on household matters, sometimes forgot her
grammar.

"Yes, mother."

"When did you have 'em took up in this chimney?"

"I do not remember--yesterday, I guess," said Diana vaguely.

"You never burnt all the ashes there is there since yesterday morning.
You'd have had to sit up all night to do it; and burn a good lot o'
wood on your fire, too."

"Mother," exclaimed Diana in desperation, "I don't suppose everything
is just as it would be if you'd been round all these days."

"I guess it ain't," said Mrs. Starling. "There's where you are wanting,
Diana. Your hands are good enough, but I wouldn't give much for your
eyes. There's where you'd grow poor, if you weren't poor a'ready. Now
you didn't know when that pane o' glass was broke. You'd go round and
round, and a pane o' glass'd knock out here, and a quart of oil 'ud
leak out there, and you'd lose a pound of flour between the sieve and
the barrel, and you'd never know how or where."

"Mother," said Diana, "you know I _never_ spill flour or anything else;
no more than you do."

"No, but it would go, I mean, and you never the wiser. It ain't the way
to get along, unless you mean to marry a rich man. Now look at that
heap o' ashes! I declare, it beats me to know what you _have_ been
doing to burn so much wood here; and mild weather, too. Who has been
here to see you, since I've been laid up?"

"Several people came to ask about you."

"Who did? and who didn't? that came at all."

"Joe Bartlett--and Mr. Masters--and Mrs. Delamater,--I can't tell you
all, mother; there's been a good many."

"Tell me the men that have been here.

"Well, those I