val to the row of great maples that
shaded the broad sidewalk. "I wonder if we can't contrive to make time
to go an' see old Miss Nancy Fell?" she ventured to ask Mrs. Flagg.
"There ain't a great deal o' time before the stage goes at four
o'clock; 't will pass quickly, but I should hate to have her feel
hurt. If she was one we had visited often at home, I shouldn't care so
much, but such folks feel any little slight. She was a member of our
church; I think a good deal of that."

"Well, I hardly know what to say," faltered Mrs. Flagg coldly. "We
might just look in a minute; I shouldn't want her to feel hurt."

"She was one that always did her part, too," said Miss Pickett, more
boldly. "Mr. Cronin used to say that she was more generous with her
little than many was with their much. If she hadn't lived in a poor
part of the town, and so been occupied with a different kind of people
from us, 't would have made a difference. They say she's got a
comfortable little home over here, an' keeps house for a nephew. You
know she was to our meeting one Sunday last winter, and 'peared
dreadful glad to get back; folks seemed glad to see her, too. I don't
know as you were out."

"She always wore a friendly look," said Mrs. Flagg indulgently.
"There, now, there's Mis' Timms's residence; it's handsome, ain't it,
with them big spruce-trees. I expect she may be at the window now, an
see us as we come along. Is my bonnet on straight, an' everything? The
blinds looks open in the room this way; I guess she's to home fast
enough."

The friends quickened their steps, and with shining eyes and beating
hearts hastened forward. The slightest mists of uncertainty were now
cleared away; they gazed at the house with deepest pleasure; the visit
was about to begin.

They opened the front gate and went up the short walk, noticing the
pretty herring-bone pattern of the bricks, and as they stood on the
high steps Cynthia Pickett wondered whether she ought not to have worn
her best dress, even though there was lace at the neck and sleeves,
and she usually kept it for the most formal of tea-parties and
exceptional parish festivals. In her heart she commended Mrs. Flagg
for that familiarity with the ways of a wider social world which had
led her to wear the very best among her black cashmeres.

"She's a good while coming to the door," whispered Mrs. Flagg
presently. "Either she didn't see us, or else she's slipped upstairs
to make some change, an' i