hile she decided which to take.

Mrs. Markham was not stingy with regard to her table; that was always
loaded with the choicest of everything, while many a poor family blessed
her as an angel. But the articles she ate were mostly the products of
their large, well-cultivated farm; they did not cost money directly out
of her hand, and it was the money she disliked parting with, so she
talked and dickered, and beat the Camden merchant down five cents on a
yard, and made him cut it a little short, to save a waste, and made him
throw in the thread and binding and swear when she was gone, wondering
who "the stingy old woman was." And yet the very day after her return
from Camden "the stingy old woman" had sent to her minister a loaf of
bread and a pail of butter, and to a poor sick woman, who lived in a
leaky cabin off in the prairie, a nice, warm blanket for her bed, with a
basket of delicacies to tempt her capricious appetite.

In due time the carpet had been made, Melinda Jones sewing up three of
the seams, while Andy, who knew how to use the needle almost as well as
a girl, claimed the privilege of sewing at least half a seam on the new
sister's carpet. Adjoining Richard's chamber was a little room where
Mrs. Markham's flour and meal and corn were kept, but which, with a
little fitting up, would answer nicely for a bedroom, and after an
amount of engineering, which would have done credit to the general of an
army, Melinda succeeded in coaxing Mrs. Markham to move her barrels and
bags, and give up the room for Ethelyn's bed, which looked very nice and
inviting, notwithstanding that the pillows were small, and the bedstead
a high poster, which had been in use for twenty years. Mrs. Markham knew
all about the boxes, as she called them. There was one in Mrs. Jones'
front chamber, but she had never bought one, for what then would she do
with her old ones--"with them laced cords," so greatly preferable to the
hard slats, which nearly broke her back the night she slept on some at a
friend's house in Olney.

Richard was fond of books, and had collected from time to time a
well-selected library, which was the only ornament in his room when
Melinda first took it in hand; but when she had finished her work--when
the carpet was down, and the neat, white shades were up at the windows;
when the books which used to be on the floor and table, and chairs, and
mantel, and window sills, and anywhere, were neatly arranged in the very
respe