“Now, don’t you, ’Becca. You’ve happened on a kind of a poor time with us, but we’ve got more belongings than you see here, an’ a good large cluset, where we can store those things there ain’t room to have about. You an’ Miss Trimble have happened on a kind of poor day, you know. Soon’s I git me some stout shoes an’ rubbers, as Mandy says, I can fetch home plenty o’ little dry boughs o’ pine; you remember I was always a great hand to roam in the woods? If we could only have a front room, so ’t we could look out on the road an’ see passin’, an’ was shod for meetin’, I don’ know ’s we should complain. Now we’re just goin’ to give you what we’ve got, an’ make out with a good welcome. We make more tea ’n we want in the mornin’, an’ then let the fire go down, since ’t has been so mild. We’ve got a _good_ cluset” (disappearing as she spoke), “an’ I know this to be good tea, ’cause it’s some o’ yourn, Mis’ Trimble. An’ here’s our sprigged chiny cups that R’becca knows by sight, if Mis’ Trimble don’t. We kep’ out four of ’em, an’ put the even half dozen with the rest of the auction stuff. I’ve often wondered who’d got ’em, but I never asked, for fear ’twould be somebody that would distress us. They was mother’s, you know.” The four cups were poured, and the little table pushed to the bed, where Rebecca Wright still sat, and Mandana, wiping her eyes, came and joined her. Mrs. Trimble sat in her chair at the end, and Ann trotted about the room in pleased content for a while, and in and out of the closet, as if she still had much to do; then she came and stood opposite Mrs. Trimble. She was very short and small, and there was no painful sense of her being obliged to stand. The four cups were not quite full of cold tea, but there was a clean old tablecloth folded double, and a plate with three pairs of crackers neatly piled, and a small—it must be owned, a very small—piece of hard white cheese. Then, for a treat, in a glass dish, there was a little preserved peach, the last—Miss Rebecca knew it instinctively—of the household stores brought from their old home. It was very sugary, this bit of peach; and as she helped her guests and sister Mandy, Miss Ann Bray said, half unconsciously, as she often had said with less reason in the old days, “Our preserves ain’t so good as usual this year; this is beginning to candy.” Both the guests protested, while Rebecca added that the taste of it carried her back, and made her feel young again. The Brays had always managed to keep one or two peach-trees alive in their corner of a garden. “I’ve been keeping this preserve for a treat,” said her friend. “I’m glad to have you eat some, ’Becca. Last summer I often wished you was home an’ could come an’ see us, ’stead o’ being away off to Plainfields.”