"Dolly is a good, helpful little girl, and I don't know what I should do without her," said Mrs. Cushing; "she does act like a grown-up woman, and I am glad of it." Dolly's face flushed with delight; she felt that at last she had reached the summit of her ambition: she was properly appreciated! "And you boys," continued Mrs. Cushing, "must act like grown-up men, and be considerate and helpful." "All right, Mother; only give the orders. Bob and I can make the fires, and bring in the wood, and fill the tea-kettle, and do lots of things." And, to do the boys justice, they did do their best to lighten the domestic labors of this interregnum. The exigency would have been far less serious were it not that the minister's house in those days was a sort of authorized hotel, not only for the ministerial brotherhood but for all even remotely connected with the same, and all that miscellaneous drift-wood of hospitality that the eddies of life cast ashore. The minister's table was always a nicely-kept one; the Parsonage was a place where it was pleasant to abide; and so the guest-chamber of the Parsonage was seldom empty. In fact, this very week a certain Brother Waring, an ex-minister from East Poganuc, who wanted to consult the Poganuc Doctor, came, unannounced, with his wife and trunk, and they settled themselves comfortably down. Such inflictions were in those days received in the literal spirit of the primitive command to "use hospitality without grudging;" but when a week had passed and news came that Mrs. Higgins was going down to the grave in quick consumption, and that Nabby would be wanted at home for an indefinite period, it became necessary to find some one to fill her place at the Parsonage, and Hiel Jones's mother accepted the position temporarily--considering her services in the minister's family as a sort of watch upon the walls of Zion. Not that she was by any means insensible to the opportunity of receiving worldly wages; but she wished it explicitly understood that she was not going out to service. She was "helpin' Mis' Cushing." The help, however, was greatly balanced in this case by certain attendant hindrances such as seem inseparable from the whole class of "lady helps."