“I always like to keep the day,” said the old hostess, as they seated themselves and drew their splint-bottomed chairs a little nearer together than before. “You see, I was brought up to it, and father made a good deal of it; he said he liked to make it pleasant and give the year a fair start. I can see him now, how he used to be standing there by the fireplace when we came out o’ the two bedrooms early in the morning, an’ he always made out, poor ’s he was, to give us some little present, and he’d heap ’em up on the corner o’ the mantelpiece, an’ we’d stand front of him in a row, and mother be bustling about gettin’ breakfast. One year he give me a beautiful copy o’ the ‘Life o’ General Lafayette,’ in a green cover,—I’ve got it now, but we child’n ’bout read it to pieces,—an’ one year a nice piece o’ blue ribbon, an’ Abby—that was your mother, Abby—had a pink one. Father was real kind to his child’n. I thought o’ them early days when I first waked up this mornin’, and I couldn’t help lookin’ up then to the corner o’ the shelf just as I used to look.” “There’s nothin’ so beautiful as to have a bright childhood to look back to,” said Mrs. Hand. “Sometimes I think child’n has too hard a time now,—all the responsibility is put on to ’em, since they take the lead o’ what to do an’ what they want, and get to be so toppin’ an’ knowin’. ’Twas happier in the old days, when the fathers an’ mothers done the rulin’.” “They say things have changed,” said Aunt Cynthy; “but staying right here, I don’t know much of any world but my own world.” Abby Pendexter did not join in this conversation, but sat in her straight-backed chair with folded hands and the air of a good child. The little old dog had followed her in, and now lay sound asleep again at her feet. The front breadth of her black dress looked rusty and old in the sunshine that slanted across it, and the aunt’s sharp eyes saw this and saw the careful darns. Abby was as neat as wax, but she looked as if the frost had struck her. “I declare, she’s gittin’ along in years,” thought Aunt Cynthia compassionately. “She begins to look sort o’ set and dried up, Abby does. She oughtn’t to live all alone; she’s one that needs company.” At this moment Abby looked up with new interest. “Now, aunt,” she said, in her pleasant voice, “I don’t want you to forget to tell me if there ain’t some sewin’ or mendin’ I can do whilst I’m here. I know your hands trouble you some, an’ I may ’s well tell you we’re bent on stayin’ all day an’ makin’ a good visit, Mis’ Hand an’ me.”