Miss Penny looked anxiously after the minister as he walked away. "I do hope he'll get that home safe!" she said. "I set out to ask him if he didn't think he'd better put it in his pocket, but I was afraid he might think me forth-puttin'. Like as not he'll forget every single thing about it, and drop it right in the street. There! I don't see _why_ men-folks is so forgetful, do you, Sister? Not that they are all alike, of course." "Some ways they are," said Miss Prudence. Miss Prudence was invisible, but the door between the shop and her sanctum was always ajar, for she liked to hear what was going on. "I never see the man yet that I'd trust to carry a parcel home; not a small parcel, that is. If it's a whole dress, he'll take it all right, if he takes it at all; but give him a small parcel that wants to be carried careful, and he'll drop it, or else scrunch it up in his pocket and forget it. I've got to run up these brea'ths now; Miss Wax is comin' at eleven to try on." There was a silence, broken only by the cheerful whir of the sewing-machine, and the still more cheerful voice of Miss Penny cooing to her birds. She hopped from one cage to another, feeding, stroking, caressing. "You're lookin' dumpy to-day, darlin'," she said, addressing a rather battered-looking mino bird. "There! the fact is, you ain't so young as once you was. You're like the rest of us, only you don't know it, and we do--some of us! Here's a nice bit of egg for you, Beauty; that'll shine you up some, though I do expect you've seen your best days. Luella Slocum told me she expected me to make this bird over as good as new, Sister. I told her I guessed what ailed him was the same as did the rest of us. Stop the clock tickin', I told her, and she'd stop his trouble and hers as well. She was none too well pleased. She'd just got her a new front from Miss Wax, and not a scrap of gray in it. She'd ought to sing 'Backward, turn backward,' if anybody ought. There!" The exclamation had a note of dismay in it. "What's the matter?" asked Miss Prudence; the machine had stopped, and her mouth was apparently full of pins.