“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!” And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him. “But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot travelling slowly toward her. She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper: _porter is good for Flours but better for Fokes_ and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught. She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view. On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand--she _could_ write a very neat hand-- _Thanks._ This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes. _fine groing weather Smith_ it said. Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “_groing weather_” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message: _Fine_ But that seemed curt; _for_ she added: “_for_” what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put down _potatos_. The piece of paper was withdrawn and came back with an addition: _Too mist for potatos._ And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact that _m-i-s-t_ represented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of notepaper, and wrote: