By the time the ditty was ended, Mrs. Grayson was setting the supper-table by the fire-place, doing her best to honor her guest. She took down the long-handled waffle-irons and made a plate of those delicious cakes unknown since kitchen fire-places went out, and the like of which will perhaps never be known again henceforth. She got out some of the apple-butter, of which half a barrel had been made so toilsomely but the week before, and this she flanked with a dish of her peach preserves, kept sacredly for days of state. The "chaney" cups and saucers were also set out in honor of Hiram, and the almost transparent preserved peaches were eaten with country cream, from saucers thin enough to show an opalescent translucency, and decorated with a gilt band and delicate little flowers. This china, which had survived the long wagon-journey from Maryland, was not often trusted upon the table. "My! What a nice supper we've got, Aunt Marthy!" said Janet, clapping her hands, as they took their seats at the table. "It seems to me you're making company out of me," said Mason, in a tone of protest. "We sha'n't have you again soon, Mason," said Tom, "and we don't often see the like of you." The words were spontaneous, but Tom ducked his head with a half-ashamed air when he had spoken them. Barbara liked Tom's little speech: it expressed feelings that she could not venture to utter; and it had, besides, a touch of Tom's old gayety of feeling in it. When supper was well out of the way Hiram proposed a walk with Barbara, but it did no good. They talked mechanically about what they were not thinking about, and by the time they got back to the house Mason was becoming desperate. He must leave in the morning very early, and he had made no progress; he could not bring himself to approach the subject about which Barbara seemed so loath to speak, and concerning which he dreaded a rebuff as he dreaded death. They entered the old kitchen and found no one there; the embers were flickering in the spacious fire-place and peopling the room with grotesque shadows and dancing lights. "Let us sit here awhile, Barbara," he said, with a strange note of entreaty in his tone, as he swung the heavy door shut and put down the wooden latch--relic of the pioneer period. "Just as you please, Mr. Mason," answered Barbara, "Oh! say _Hiram_, won't you?" He said this with a touch of impatience. "Hiram!" said Barbara, laughing. He led her to the loom-bench. "Sit there on high, as you did the night you put me into a state of misery from which I haven't escaped yet. There, put your feet on the chair-rung, as you did that night." He spoke with peremptoriness, as he placed a chair for her feet, so that she might sit with her back to the loom. Then he drew up another shuck-bottomed chair in such a way as to sit beside and yet half facing her, but lower. "Now," he said, doggedly, "we can finish the talk we had then."