Miss Sophia's face fell. She had been looking forward to those peas ever since breakfast. And she remembered that Miss Judy had sent Tom the earliest asparagus. But she assented as readily and as cheerfully as she could, and, drawing her low rocking-chair closer to Miss Judy's, resignedly settled herself to help with the shelling of the peas. The tinkling they made as they fell in the shining pan soon lulled her, for she never could sit still long and keep awake, so that she presently fell to nodding and straightening up and nodding again. Straightening up very resolutely, she began rocking slowly, trying in that way to keep from going to sleep. "The creak of that old chair makes me sleepy too," said Miss Judy, smilingly, yet looking a little sad. "It sounds to-day just as it did when mother used it to rock us to sleep--just the same peaceful, contented, homely little creak. There!" she said as the last plump pea tinkled on the tin. "And I declare, sister Sophia, just look at all these fine fat hulls! Why, we can have some nice rich soup made out of them, as well as not!" "Just so, sister Judy," Miss Sophia responded eagerly, at once wide awake and sitting up suddenly, quite straight. "And with plenty of thickening too." "To be sure! What a head you have, sister Sophia," Miss Judy cried, admiringly. "And then we'll have something to send old Mr. Mills as well as Tom. Just to please Kitty," she added, seeing the shade which came over Miss Sophia's face, and misunderstanding its source. "It is ten to one but he will be in one of his tempers and throw the soup out of the window, as he did that dinner of Kitty's--dishes and all. But we can instruct Merica to hold on to the bowl till Kitty herself takes it from her. It always pleases Kitty so, for anybody to show the old man any little attention. And, after all, he is not so much to be blamed, poor old sufferer. Being bedfast with lumbago must be mighty trying to the temper. And then Sam, too, is threatened with a bad pain in his back every time he tries to do any work. It actually appears to come on if he even thinks about working, or if a body so much as mentions work before him. Maybe that's what makes Sam a bit irritable with the old man sometimes. But Kitty never is. All his crossness, all his unreasonableness, all his fault-finding--which is natural enough, poor old soul--just rolls off her good nature like water off a duck's back. She only laughs and pets him, and goes on trying harder then ever to please him. Did you ever see anybody like Kitty, sister Sophia?"