It was sooner than Betty expected her, but the clean, cool house, peeping out from the dense shadows of the maples, looked like a paradise to the tired, dusty woman, who rode down the street in the village hack and surprised Betty sitting in the back door cutting off corn to dry and talking to Uncle Billy, whose scythe lay on the grass while he drank from the gourd swimming on top of the water-pail. Betty was glad to see her mistress, and lamented that she did not know of her coming, so as to have a nice hot cup of tea ready, with a delicate morsel of something. Aunt Barbara was satisfied to be home on any terms, though her nose did go up a little, and something which sounded like "P-shew!" dropped from her lips as she entered the dark sitting room, where the odor was not the best in the world. "It's the rat, ma'am, I think," Betty said, opening both blinds and windows. "I put the pizen for him as you said, and all I could do he would die in the wall. It ain't as bad as it has been, and I've got some stuff here to kill it, though I think it smells worse than the rat himself," and Betty held her nose as she pointed out to her mistress the saucer of chloride of lime which, at Mrs. Col. Markham's suggestion, she had put in the sitting room. Aside from the rat in the wall, things were mostly as Aunt Barbara could wish them to be. The vinegar had made beautifully. There was fresh yeast, brewed the day before, in the jug. The milk-pans were bright and sweet; the cellar door was fastened; the garden was looking its best; the silver was all up the scuttle-hole, Betty climbing up and risking her neck every morning to see if it were safe; the stoop and steps were scrubbed, the roof was swept, and both the cats, Tabby and Jim, were so fat that they could scarcely walk as they came up to greet their mistress. Only two mishaps Betty had to relate. Jim had eaten up the canary bird, and she had broken the kitchen tongs. She had also failed to accomplish as much sewing as she had hoped to do, and the pile of work was not greatly diminished. "There is so many steps to take when a body is alone, and with you gone I was more particular," she said, by way of apology, as she confessed to the rat, and the canary bird, and the kitchen tongs, and the small amount of sewing she had done.