Old Miss's step was heard in the hall, very firm and authoritative. In a moment she entered the room, portly, not perceptibly aged, her hair, beneath her cap, hardly more than powdered with grey, still wearing black stuff gowns and white aprons and heelless low shoes over white stockings. Hagar rose from the rug and pushed the big chair toward the fire. Old Miss dropped into it--no, not "dropped"--lowered herself with dignity. "Has Isham brought the mail?" "No, not yet." "I dreamed last night that there was a letter from Medway. Serena!" "Yes, mother?" "The next text you paint I want you to do one for me. _Honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long_--" Miss Serena turned on the piano-stool. "I'll do it right away, mother. It would be lovely in blue and gold.... You can't say that I haven't honoured father and mother." Old Miss had drawn out her knitting and now her needles clicked. "No one honours them as they used to be honoured. No one obeys them as they used to obey. To-day children think that they are wiser than their fathers. They set up to use their own judgment until it's a scandal.... It's true you've been better than most, Serena. Taking you year in and year out, you've obeyed the commandment. It's more than many daughters and grand-daughters that I know have done." Her needles clicked again. "Yes, Serena, you haven't given us much trouble. You were easy to make mind from the beginning." She gave the due praise, but her tone was not without acerbity. It might almost have seemed that such forthright ductility and keeping of the commandment as had been Miss Serena's had its side of annoyance and satiety. Hagar spoke from the window where she stood, her forehead pressed against the glass. "I see Isham down the road, by the Half-Mile Cedar." Old Miss turned the heel of the Colonel's sock she was knitting. "Things that from the newspaper and my personal observation happen now in the world could not possibly have occurred when I was young. People defying their betters, women deserting their natural sphere, atheists denying hell and saying that the world wasn't made in six days, young girls talking about independence and their own lives--their own lives! Ha!" Miss Serena began to play "The Sea in the Shell." "We all know how Hagar came by her disposition, but I must say it is an unfortunate one! When I was her age, no money could have made me act as she has done." "No money could have made me, either," spoke Hagar at the window. "Money has nothing to do with it!" said Old Miss. "At least as far as Hagar is concerned, nothing! But fitness, propriety, meekness, and modesty, consultation with those to whom she owes duty, and bowing to what they say--all those have something to do with it! But what could you expect? It was bound to come out some day. From a bush with thorns will come a bush with thorns." "Here is Isham," said Hagar. "If you've said enough for to-day, grandmother, shall I get the mail?"