. There would also
be a basin and pitcher the size of a cup and saucer, and a bed that
sagged in the middle and was covered with a cotton quilt.

The _Nautilus_ stopped at a gate, beyond which was a smaller Jacob's
ladder leading to a white cottage. Was there nothing built on a level
in Sheffield? I asked myself. The bags which had been hung on the shafts
came first, then I, then the muffled head and cloak. Upward and onward
again, through a door, past a pretty girl who stood with her hand on
the knob in welcome, and into a hall. Here the girl helped unmummy her
mother, and then turned up the hall-lamp.

Oh, such a dear, sweet gray-haired old lady! The kind of an old lady
you would have wanted to stay--not a night with--but a year. An old lady
with plump fresh cheeks and soft brown eyes and a smile that warmed you
through and through. And such an all-embracing restful room with its
open wood fire, andirons and polished fender--and the plants and books
and easy-chairs! And the cheer of it all!

"Now you just sit there and get comfortable," she said, patting my
shoulder--(the second time in one night that a woman's hand had been
that of an angel). "Maggie'll get you some supper. We had it all ready,
expecting you on the six-ten. Hungry, aren't you?"

Hungry! I could have gnawed a hole in a sofa to get at the straw
stuffing.

She drew up a chair, waited till her daughter had left the room, and
said with a twinkle in her eyes:

"Oh, I was glad you gave it to 'em the way you did, and when you sailed
into that snivelling old Hard-shell deacon, I just put my hands down
under my petticoats and clapped them for joy. There isn't anybody
running anything up here. They don't have to pay for this lecture
course. It was given to them by a man who is dead. All they think
they've got to do is to dress themselves up. They're all officers;
there's a recording secretary and a corresponding secretary and an
executive committee and a president and two vice-presidents, and a lot
more that I can't remember. Everyone of them is leaving everything
to somebody else to attend to. I know, because I take care of all the
lecturers that come. Only last winter a lady lecturer arrived here on a
load of wood; she didn't lose her temper and get mad like you did. Maybe
you know her; she told us all about the Indians and her husband, the
great general, who was surrounded and massacred by them."

"Know her, Madam, not only do I know and love her, bu