“‘There’s richness for you,’” she quoted. “A whole bed of them is awaiting your inspection in the garden. And such lovely pansies—some as big as the palm of your hand. You and I and Homer, who is wild with delight over them, will claim the flowers as our especial charge and property.” “Thank you for the classification!” snapped Hester. “Yet we do belong to backyards as naturally as cats and tomato cans. At least Homer and I do. You’d climb the fence if you could.” “With the other cats?” said Hetty lightly. “See! I am putting the hyacinths in your own little vase. I unpacked your china and books last night. Not a thing was even nicked. You shall arrange them in this jolly corner cupboard after breakfast. It looks as if it were made a-puppose, as Homer says. He has bumped his head against strange doors and skinned his poor nose against unexpected corners twenty times this morning. He says: ‘_Now_—I s’pose it’s the bran-new house what _ox_cites me so. I allers gits _ox_cited in a strange place.’” The well-meant diversion was ineffectual. “His oxcitement ought to be chronic, then! Ugh! that water is scalding hot!” shrinking from the sponge in Hetty’s hand. “For we’ve done nothing but ‘move on’ ever since I can recollect. I overheard mother say once, with a sort of reminiscent sigh, that our ‘longest pastorate was in Cincinnati.’ We were there just four years. We were six months in Chillicothe, and seven in Ypsilanti. Then there was a year in Memphis, and eighteen months in Natchez, and thirteen in Davenport. The Little Rock church had a strong constitution. We stayed there two years and one week. It’s _my_ opinion that _he_ is the Wandering Jew, and we are one of the Lost Tribes.” She smiled sour approbation of her sarcastic sally, jerking her head backward to bring Hetty’s face within range of her vision. The deft fingers were fastening strings and straps over the misshapen shoulders. The visage was grave, but always kind to her difficult charge. “You think that is irreverent,” Hester fretted, wrinkling her forehead and beetling her eyebrows. “It isn’t a circumstance to what I am thinking all the time. Some day I shall be left to myself and my bosom devil long enough to spit it all out. It’s just bottling up, like the venom in Macbeth’s witches’ toad that had sweltered so long under a stone. But for you, crosspatch, all would have been said and done long ago.” “You wouldn’t make your mother unhappy if you could help it,” Hetty said cheerily. “And it isn’t flattering to her to compare her daughter to a toad.”