It meant for them thirty miles of staging and six hours of train, besides crossing the lake; but what of that, compared with having a lie lying round loose between them! Europe would have seemed easy to accomplish, if it would settle the question. At the little junction in Vermont they found a farmer with a wagon full of meal-bags. They asked him if he could not take them up to the old Keys farm and bring them back in time for the return train, due in two hours. They had planned to call it a sketching trip, so they said, ‘We have been there before, we are artists, and we might find some views worth taking; and we want also to make a short call upon the Misses Keys.’ ‘Did ye calculate to paint the old _house_ in the picture?’ They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it, anyway. ‘Waal, I guess you are too late. The _house_ burnt down last night, and everything in it.’ [Illustration] THE SEQUEL TO THE LITTLE ROOM. ‘For the land’s sake! What’ll Maria do now!’ ‘That’s just what Hiram said--“What’ll Maria do now!” It aint as if she had folks belongin’ to her, and now the house is burnt, and Hannah is _as_ she is, it does seem as if Maria’d find it hard gittin’ on alone and doin’ her own thinkin’.’ ‘There wan’t nothin’ saved, I s’pose.’ ‘Next door to nothin’; one washtub, I believe, and the old gray horse that was out to pasture, that’s about all; I did hear, though, something about the men-folks’ having saved a blue-chintz sofy--’twas the only thing they could get out of the house before the roof fell in; they couldn’t seem to get a holt of anythin’ else, ’twas so hot, and the old house burnt like tinder; Hannah she was that scairt she seemed dazed, and this mornin’ Miss Fife, she that married Ben Fife down on the Edge farm, at the foot of the hill, they took ’em in and did for ’em; and when Lucindy Fife went to call ’em to breakfast at five o’clock, there was Maria cryin’ like a baby, and Hannah lyin’, like an image, with her eyes starin’ wide open; she must a had a shock in the night.’ ‘Fur the land’s sake!’ said the other woman again. ‘Yes, and Miss Fife she tried to get Maria to eat somethin’, but she wouldn’t eat a thing; she just sat and cried; you know she was always sort of a shadder to Hannah, and now she’s just like a baby.’ ‘I declair! I believe I’ll go up to Miss Fife’s; I hate to lose the time, I ought to stir butter to-day; but just as likely as not lots of folks’ll drop in, and I sort of want to hear it all at first hand.’ ‘I believe you’re right, and if you’ll set a while, I’ll hurry up these doughnuts and be ready in no time; it’s a sort of lonesome walk up there.’ The Widder Luke turned the light side of a doughnut under, the fat sizzled, and Jane Peebles said: ‘Did you hear what sofy ’twas that they saved?’