on a slate
outside the tool-house door. Abe sniffed disdainfully, contemplating her
homely countenance, over which this morning's mood had cast a not
unlovely, transforming glow.

"Why, the scalawag!" He frowned so at the face in the window that it
immediately disappeared. "Yew don't mean ter tell me he's sot ag'in' yew
gals? He must be crazy! Sech a handsome, clever set o' women I never did
see!"

Sarah Jane blushed to the roots of her thin, straight hair and sat down,
suddenly disarmed of every porcupine quill that she had hidden under
her wings; while there was an agreeable little stir among the sisters.

"Set deown, all hands! Set deown!" enjoined Miss Abigail, fluttering
about with the heaviness of a fat goose. "Brother Abe,--that 's what
we've all agreed to call yew, by unanimous vote,--yew set right here at
the foot of the table. Aunt Nancy always had the head an' me the foot;
but I only kept the foot, partly becuz thar wa'n't no man fer the place,
an' partly becuz I was tew sizable ter squeeze in any-whar else. Seein'
as Sister Angy is sech a leetle mite, though, I guess she kin easy make
room fer me t' other side o' her."

Abe could only bow his thanks as he put his gift down on the table and
took the prominent place assigned to him. The others seated, there was
a solemn moment of waiting with bowed heads. Aunt Nancy's trembling
voice arose,--the voice which had jealously guarded the right of saying
grace at table in the Old Ladies' Home for twenty years,--not, however,
in the customary words of thanksgiving, but in a peremptory "Brother
Abe!"

Abraham looked up. Could she possibly mean that he was to establish
himself as the head of the household by repeating grace? "Brother Abe!"
she called upon him again. "Yew've askt a blessin' fer one woman fer
many a year; supposin' neow yew ask it fer thirty!"

Amid the amazement of the other sisters, Abe mumbled, and muttered, and
murmured--no one knew what words; but all understood the overwhelming
gratitude behind his incoherency, and all joined heartily in the Amen.
Then, while Mrs. Homan, the cook of the week, went bustling out into the
kitchen, Aunt Nancy felt that it devolved upon her to explain her
action. It would never do, she thought, for her to gain a reputation for
self-effacement and sweetness of disposition at her time of life.

"Son, I want yew ter understand one thing naow at the start. Yew treat
us right, an' we'll treat yew right. That's all w