"Well, mebbe we'll come over to-morrow," said Hannah. "We've got some pillow-slips to trim, an' we can bring them. You'd better ask Sarah an' Charlotte, if she can stay away from Rebecca Thayer's long enough." "Yes, I will," said Sylvia, feebly, over her shoulder. "We'll come early," said Hannah. Then the sisters sped apart through the early winter darkness. Poor Sylvia fairly groaned out loud when her sister was out of hearing and she had turned the corner of the old road. "What shall I do? what shall I do?" she muttered. Her sisters to tea meant hot biscuits and plum sauce and pie and pound-cake and tea. Sylvia had yet a little damson sauce at the bottom of a jar, although she had not preserved last year, for lack of sugar; but hot biscuits and pie, the pound-cake and tea would have to be provided. She felt again of the little money-store in her pocket; that was all that stood between her and the poor-house; every penny was a barrier and had its carefully calculated value. This outlay would reduce terribly her little period of respite and independence; yet she hesitated as little as Fouquet planning the splendid entertainment, which would ruin him, for Louis XIII. Her sisters and nieces must come to tea; and all the food, which was the village fashion and as absolute in its way as court etiquette, must be provided. "They'll suspect if I don't," said Sylvia Crane. She rolled away the stone from the door and entered her solitary house. She lighted her candle and prepared for bed. She did not get any supper. She said to herself with a sudden fierceness, which came over her at times--a mild impulse of rebellion which indicated perhaps some strain from far-off, untempered ancestors, which had survived New England generations--that she did not care if she never ate supper again. "They're all comin' troopin' in here to-morrow, an' it's goin' to take about all the little I've got left to get victuals for 'em, an' I've got to go without to-night if I starve!" she cried out quite loud and defiantly, as if her hard providence lurked within hearing in some dark recess of the room. She raked ashes over the coals in the fireplace. "I'll go to bed an' save the fire, too," she said; "it'll take about all the wood I've got left to-morrow. I've got to heat the oven. Might as well go to bed, an' lay there forever, anyway. If I stayed up till doomsday nobody'd come." Sylvia set the shovel back with a vicious clatter; then she struck out--like a wilful child who hurts itself because of its rage and impotent helplessness to hurt aught else--her thin, red hand against the bricks of the chimney. She looked at the bruises on it with bitter exultation, as if she saw in them some evidence of her own freedom and power, even to her own hurt.