knitting; so was her
grandmother. Madge was making more linen collars. Lois sat by her
grandmother's chair, for the minute doing nothing.

"What do you expect to do for a bonnet, Lois?" Charity broke the
silence.

"Or I either?" put in Madge. "Or you yourself, Charity? We are all in
the same box."

"I wish our hats were!" said the elder sister.

"I have not thought much about it," Lois answered. "I suppose, if
necessary, I shall wear my straw."

"Then you'll have nothing to wear in the summer! It's robbing Peter to
pay Paul."

"Well," said Lois, smiling,--"if Paul's turn comes first. I cannot look
so long ahead as next summer."

"It'll be here before you can turn round," said Charity, whose knitting
needles flew without her having any occasion to watch them. "And then,
straw is cold in winter."

"I can tie a comforter over my ears."

"That would look poverty-stricken."

"I suppose," said Madge slowly, "that is what we are. It looks like it,
just now."

"'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich,'" Mrs. Armadale said.

"Yes, mother," said Charity; "but our cow died because she was tethered
carelessly."

"And our hay failed because there was no rain," Madge added. "And our
apples gave out because they killed themselves with bearing last year."

"You forget, child, it is the Lord 'that giveth rain, both the former
and the latter, in his season.'"

"But he _didn't_ give it, mother; that's what I'm talking about;
neither the former _nor_ the latter; though what that means, I'm sure I
don't know; we have it all the year round, most years."

"Then be contented if a year comes when he does not send it."

"Grandmother, it'll do for you to talk; but what are we girls going to
do without bonnets?"

"Do without," said Lois archly, with the gleam of her eye and the arch
of her pretty brow which used now and then to bewitch poor Tom
Caruthers.

"We have hardly apples to make sauce of," Charity went on. "If it had
been a good year, we could have got our bonnets with our apples,
nicely. Now, I don't see where they are to come from."

"Don't wish for what the Lord don't send, child," said Mrs. Armadale.

"O mother! that's a good deal to ask," cried Charity. "It's very well
for you, sitting in your arm-chair all the year round; but we have to
put our heads out; and for one, I'd rather have something on them.
Lois, haven't you got anything to do, that you sit there with your
hands in your lap?"

"I am going to t