d have no
chance to wear.

Hephzibah turned and walked listlessly back to her kitchen and her
dish-washing. Twelve hours later her unaccustomed lips were spelling
out the words on a small white card which had come with a handsomely
framed photograph:

The Angelus. Jean Francois Millet. 1859.

Hephzibah looked from the card to the picture, and from the picture
back again to the card. Gradually an angry light took the place of the
dazed wonder in her eyes. She turned fiercely to her husband.

"Theron, _why_ did Helen send me that picture?" she demanded.

"Why, Hetty, I--I dunno," faltered the man, "'nless she--she--wanted
ter please ye."

"Please me!--_please me_!" scoffed Hephzibah. "Did she expect to
please me with a thing like that? Look here, Theron, look!" she cried,
snatching up the photograph and bringing it close to her husband's
face. "Look at that woman and that man--they're us, Theron,--us, I
tell you!"

"Oh, come, Hetty," remonstrated Theron; "they ain't jest the same, yer
know. She did n't mean nothin'--Helen did n't."

"Didn't mean nothing!" repeated Hephzibah scornfully; "then why did n't
she send something pretty?--something that showed up pretty things--not
just fields and farm-folks! Why did n't she, Theron,--why did n't she?"

"Why, Hetty, don't! She--why, she--"

"I know," cut in the woman, a bright red flaming into her cheeks. "'T
was 'cause she thought that was all we could understand--dirt, and old
clothes, and folks that look like us! Don't we dig and dig like them?
Ain't our hands twisted and old and--"

"Hetty--yer ain't yerself! Yer--"

"Yes, I am--I am! I'm always myself--there's never anything else I can
be, Theron,--never!" And Hephzibah threw her apron over her head and
ran from the room, crying bitterly.

"Well, by gum!" muttered the man, as he dropped heavily into the
nearest chair.

For some days the picture stayed on the shelf over the kitchen sink,
where it had been placed by Theron as the quickest means of its
disposal. Hephzibah did not seem to notice it after that first day,
and Theron was most willing to let the matter drop.

It must have been a week after the picture's arrival that the minister
made his semi-yearly call.

"Oh, you have an Angelus! That's fine," he cried, appreciatively;--the
minister always begged to stay in Hephzibah's kitchen, that room being
much more to his mind than was the parlor, carefully guarded from sun
and air.