Ichabod jingled for the dozenth time a gold coin and some small silver ones in his nervous hand, and his wife frowned. “You have told us all this before,” said she. “There is something else that you keep back.” Ichabod was smiling importantly, he could not control his mouth; but he went back without another word to old Widow Nye’s gravestone, and the weeping-willow thereon grew apace under his hands. However, he could not keep anything to himself long, least of all from his wife, with her imperative curiosity. After dinner that noon he beckoned her into the front room. “What do you want of me?” she said. “I have the work to do.” She felt that his previous silence demanded some show of dignity upon her part. Ichabod glanced at his staring daughters, and beckoned beseechingly. “Well, I can’t waste much time,” said Sarah; but she followed him eagerly into the front room. They were shut in there some time. The daughters, tidying up the kitchen, could hear the low murmur of their parents’ voices, but that was all. Persis was polishing the brasses on the hearth--the andirons and the knobs on the shovel and tongs. That was always her task. It roughened her small hands, but nobody ever minded that. To-day, as she was scouring away sturdily, her mother came suddenly out of the front room and caught her plying arm. “There!” said she; “you need do no more of this. ’Twill get your hands all out of shape, and make them rough. They are too small for such work. Submit, come here and finish scouring the brasses.” Persis looked up at her mother and then at her little red grimy hands in a bewildered way. “Go and wash your hands, and then rub some Injun meal on them, and see if it will not make them a little softer,” ordered her mother. “Submit, make haste.” Submit, although she was herself puzzled, and might well have been resentful, knelt obediently down on the hearth, and fell to work on the brasses, rubbing vigorously with salt and vinegar. Persis washed her hands as her mother bade her, and afterwards rubbed on some Indian meal. Then she was ordered to put on her pink-flowered chintz gown, and sit down in the front room with her sampler. Her mother braided her fair hair for her in two tight smooth braids, and crossed them neatly at the back. She even put her own beautiful high tortoise-shell comb in her daughter’s head. “You may wear it a spell if you want to,” said she. Persis smiled delightedly. Her chief worldly ambition had been to wear a shell comb like her mother’s.