Our house was thronged for several days. "Pay us," cried the female portion of his creditors. In vain father represented that he was still young--that his business days were not over--that they must wait, for paid they should be. "Pay us now, for we are women," they still cried. Fanny opened the doors for these persons as wide as possible when they came, and shut them with a bang when they went, astonishing them with a satirical politeness, or confounding them with an impertinent silence. The important creditors held meetings to agree what should be done, and effected an arrangement by which his property was left in his hands for three years, to arrange for the benefit of his creditors. The arrangement proved that his integrity was not suspected; but it was an ingenious punishment, that he should keep in sight, improve, or change, for others, what had been his own. I was glad when he decided to sell his real estate and personal property, and trust to the ships alone, but would build no more. I begged him to keep our house till Ben should return. He consented to wait; but I did not tell Verry what I had done. All the houses he owned, lots, carriages, horses, domestic stock, the fields lying round our house--were sold. When he began to sell, the fury of retrenchment seized him, and he laid out a life of self-denial for us three. Arthur's ten thousand dollars were safe, who was therefore provided for. He would bring wood and water for us; the rest we must do, with Fanny's help. We could dine in the kitchen, and put our beds in one room; by shutting up the house in part, we should have less labor to perform. We attempted to carry out his ideas, but Veronica was so dreadfully in Fanny's way and mine, that we were obliged to entreat her to resume her old rôle. As for Fanny, she was happy--working like a beaver day and night. Father was much at home, and took an extraordinary interest in the small details that Fanny carried out. When Temperance heard of these arrangements, she came down with Abram in their green and yellow wagon. Temperance drove the shaggy old white horse, for Abram was intrusted with the care of a meal bag, in which were fastened a cock and four hens. We should see, she said when she let them out, whether we were to keep hens or not. Was Veronica to go without new-laid eggs? Had he sold the cat, she sarcastically inquired of father. "Who is going to do your washing, girls?" she asked, taking off her bonnet. "We all do it." "Now I shall die a-laughing!" But she contradicted herself by crying heartily. "One day in every week, I tell _you_, I am coming; and Fanny and I can do the washing in a jiffy." "Sure," said Abram, "you can; the sass is in." "Sass or no sass, I'm coming."