ve.'

"'Then you'll do him the greatest unkindness you can--that's all,' replied
Mr. Maynard angrily, and walked out of the room. I locked myself up in my
own room and thought the whole matter over. How I could earn my own living
and Nat's, I did not know. We should have about four hundred dollars a
year. I had learned enough in my childhood of poverty to know that we need
not starve while we had that; but simply not starving is a great way off
from really living; and I felt convinced that it would be impossible for
me to keep up courage or hope unless I could contrive, in some way, to
earn money enough to surround our home with at least a semblance of the
old atmosphere. We must have books; we must have a flower sometimes; we
must have sun and air.

"At last an inspiration came to me. Down stairs, in the saddened empty
study, sat little Miss Penstock, the village dressmaker, sewing on our
gloomy black dresses. She lived all alone in a very small house near Mr.
Maynard's mill. I remembered that I had heard her say how lonely she found
it living by herself since her married sister, who used to live with her,
had gone to the West. Since then, Miss Penstock had sometimes consented to
go for a few days at a time to sew in the houses of her favorite
employers, just to keep from forgetting how to speak,' the poor little
woman said. But she disliked very much to do this. She was a gentlewoman;
and though she accepted with simple dignity the necessity of earning her
bread, it was bitterly disagreeable to her to sit as a hired sewer in
other people's houses. She liked to come to our house better than to any
other. We also were poor. My Aunt Abby was a woman of great simplicity,
and a quiet, stately humility, like Miss Penstock's own; and they enjoyed
sitting side by side whole days, sewing in silence. Miss Penstock had
always spoken with a certain sort of tender reverence to Nat, and I
remembered that he liked to be in the room where she sewed. All these
thoughts passed through my mind in a moment. I sprang to my feet and
exclaimed, 'That is it--that is it!' and I ran hastily down to the study.
Miss Penstock was alone there. She looked up in surprise at my
breathlessness and my red eyes. I knelt down by her side and took the work
out of her hands.

"'Dear Miss Penstock,' said I, 'would you rent part of your house?'

"She looked up reflectively, took off her spectacles with her left hand,
and tapped her knees slowly with them,