Alethea trudged along the road to Mrs. Purvine’s house, for the journey up the mountain was hardly a possible achievement after the fatigues of the descent. The sun had come out. It scintillated on the snow. The cascades in the half-frozen river glittered iridescent. The bluffs were outlined with drifts in all their fissures; icicles clung to them at every jutting point, and the stunted trees of their summit, whose insistent roots seemed to pierce the stone, were encased in ice, and sparkled as the wind moved them. In the midst of all this splendor Mrs. Purvine’s house was dark and humble, despite the porch, and the front steps, and the glass windows. In the half-buried garden a bevy of dark figures sped this way and that over the snow. They were aunt Dely’s boys chasing rabbits. The creatures, half famished and bold with necessity,—fatally distinct on the whitened ground,—were deftly knocked on the head with a stick, and one blow from such experts was sufficient. In the party was a smaller boy, whom, at first, Alethea was puzzled to remember. Presently she recognized ’Gustus Tom, and this prepared her to see, when she entered, “sister Eudory,” sitting in front of Mrs. Purvine’s fire. The pernicious glass in the windows added much cheerfulness to the apartment in weather like this. It aided the firelight in revealing sister Eudory’s tangle of flaxen hair and beguiling plumpness, as she sat, looking demure and wise, in one of the large rickety chairs. She was nearly five years of age now, and a great girl, and when she got down and went and stood behind the churn, in an affectation of shyness because of Alethea’s presence, she was not hidden by the article, and the handle of the dasher was insufficient to obscure her downcast face and her finger in her mouth. “Yer aig will pop an’ bust, fust thing ye know,” said aunt Dely, the politic. And Eudora forthwith came briskly out to investigate an egg which she was roasting in the ashes, the kind present of Mrs. Purvine. The hen that laid it was stalking about the room in unconscious bereavement. Now and then there was a shrill piping from a basket on the floor, from which overflowed, as it were, a downy collection of fall “deedies,” hatched too late to stand any chance of weathering the winter except by being reared into those obnoxious animals, house-chickens. A matronly feathered head would occasionally be thrust out with a remonstrant cluck, and the assemblage, miraculously escaping the heedless human foot, would climb into the basket, and there would ensue a soft sound of snuggling down and drowsy pipings. All of which excited sister Eudory almost to ecstasy. Mrs. Purvine experienced less complacence. “Ef ennybody ain’t got no baby, an’ feels like adoptin’ one ter take trouble about, jes’ let ’em git ’em a settin’ o’ aigs an’ hatch out some fall deedies. They’ll be ez much trouble ez twins!” “Whyn’t you-uns stay ter the meetin’ ter the church-house, Eudory?” demanded Alethea.