The mother stood still again in the middle of the kitchen. "A park!" "Yes. It must be something beautiful; and yet I cannot think how it could be prettier than this." "Than what?" said her mother impatiently. "Just all this. All this country; and the hayfields, and the cornfields, and the hills." "A park!" her mother repeated. "I saw a 'park' once, when I was down to New York; you wouldn't want to see it twice. A homely little mite of a green yard, with a big white house in the middle of it; and homely enough _that_ was too. It might do very well for the city folks; but the land knows I'd be sorry enough to live there. What's putting parks in your head?" But the daughter did not answer, and the mother stood still and looked at her, with perhaps an inscrutable bit of pride and delight behind her hard features. It never came out. "Diana, do you calculate to be ready for the sewin' meetin'?" "Yes, mother." "Since they must come, we may as well make 'em welcome; and they won't think it, if you meet 'em in your kitchen dress. Is the new minister comin', do you s'pose?" "I don't know if anybody has told him." "Somebody had ought to. It won't be much of a meetin' without the minister; and it 'ud give him a good chance to get acquainted. Mr. Hardenburgh used to like to come." "The new man doesn't look much like Mr. Hardenburgh." "It'll be a savin' in biscuits, if he ain't." "I used to like to see Mr. Hardenburgh eat, mother." "I hain't no objection--when I don't have the biscuits to make. Diana, you baked a pan o' them biscuits too brown. Now you must look out, when you put 'em to warm up, or they'll be more'n crisp." "Everybody else has them cold, mother." "They won't at my house. It's just to save trouble; and there ain't a lazy hair in me, you ought to know by this time." "But I thought you were for taking down people's pride, and keeping the sewing society low; and here are hot biscuits and all sorts of thing," said Diana, getting up from her seat at last. "'The cream'll be in the little red pitcher--so mind you don't go and take the green one. And do be off, child, and fix yourself; for it'll be a while yet before I'm ready, and there'll be nobody to see folks when they come."