The girls fell to their supper as healthy, hungry girls should, and for a time conversation was chiefly exclamatory, dealing with the wonders of Sarepta's cookery. By and by, however, over the ice-cream which made it a "party," as they exclaimed with delight, and later, sitting on the sofa before the singing, purring fire, they had much talk, Kitty telling of things she had seen abroad, Nelly wondering, admiring, exclaiming. But always the talk would come back to Cyrus, the home of their hearts, and to the people who lived there. Only two thousand, all told, this including the three French families and the two "Polanders" down by the little woolen mill which was our one "industry," so that between them the two girls knew or knew of almost every one within the village limits. It was a farming community, save for the comfortable store-keepers, and the half dozen "tony" families as Mrs. Sharpe called them, whose ample mansions, white or yellow, had stood about the Common since Colonial days. Cyrus, her people were wont to say, did not _grow_: she _remained_. I don't know just why they were proud of this stationary quality, but they certainly were. For fifty years, the population had hardly changed; or to be accurate, it had changed in so gradual and regular a fashion that it always seemed the same. An accurate observer like Judge Peters would tell you that once in about thirty years there were more children: the schools were fuller, the wave of youth crept slowly up till street and meeting house blossomed with youths and maidens. Then, still gradually, the wave would recede: some of the lads went away to work, some of the lasses married "out-of-towners"; the numbers dwindled again, till in another thirty years another vigorous generation would come shouting to the front. "And _how_ is Savory Bite?" asked Kitty. "Does he still live alone?" (This gentleman's real name was Avery Bright, but he was never called by it.) "My dear, yes! No one goes near him: where is the use, when he won't let any one in? He did our garden last spring, and was just the same, snapping your head off if you spoke to him. I have never been in the house, though I have peeped in the window sometimes. It's always neat as wax, I'll say that for Savory." Kitty gave a little sudden laugh. "I've been in it!" she said. "Tom and I got in one day through the cellar; he had left the door unlocked. We got up into the kitchen, and had a wonderful time. You know everything is painted blue, floor, tables, chairs, everything? Well, naughty Tom had a piece of chalk in his pocket, and what does he do but write on the blue table in big letters, "'Savory Bite, Why not paint it white?'" A silence fell: then Nelly asked the question which had been on her tongue twenty times, and twenty times kept back. "Where is Tom, Kitty? Do you know?" Kitty looked straight at her with honest eyes.