A glance at the two seated at each end of the narrow table would have enabled one to decide quickly to whom was due this desire for ornamentation, for the mother was a sharp-featured, rather untidy-looking woman, on whom the burden of hard work and poverty had laid certain harsh lines not easily eradicated, while the daughter's youth and comeliness had overcome them as a fine jewel may assert its beauty despite a cheap setting. The sun's lambent rays, falling across the girl's shapely head and shoulders, touched to deeper richness the auburn hair, gathered in a large, loose coil, that rested low upon her neck, and also accentuated the clear, delicately-tinted complexion like a semi-transparency that is given rare old china when the light illumines it. The meal was eaten almost in silence, but toward the end of the breakfast Mrs. Brown looked up suddenly, her cup of coffee raised partly to her lips, and said, in her querulous treble: "Sally, Foster Crain says aigs air fetchin' fo'hteen an' a half cents in town. Count what's stored away in the big gourd, when you git through eatin', an' take 'em in this mornin'." "How am I to go?" asked her daughter, looking up from her plate. "Joe's limping from that nail he picked up yesterday." "Likely somebody'll be passin' the gate that'll give you a seat. The Squire may be along soon." A certain inflection crept into the speaker's voice. "I'll walk," announced Sally, with sudden determination. "It's cool and pleasant, and I'd as soon walk as ride." The mother looked across furtively to where her daughter sat. "I don't see what makes you so set ag'in the Squire," she said, plaintively, a few moments later, as if she had divined her daughter's unuttered thoughts. "He's an old fool!" declared Sally, promptly. "An' it strikes me that you're somethin' of a young one!" retorted her mother sharply. The girl made no answer, save a perceptible shrug of her pretty shoulders, and soon afterward got up and began to clear away the breakfast dishes. Mrs. Brown sighed deeply. "Most girls would be powerful vain to have the Squire even notice 'em," the mother continued, in a more persuasive tone, as a sort of balm offering to the girl's wounded feelings. She placed her cup and saucer in her plate and put back a small piece of unused butter on the side of the butter dish, then slowly arose from the table. "It's seldom a po' gyurl has such a good chance to better her condition, if she was only willin' to do so," she continued argumentatively, for the subject was a favorite theme with her, and she had rung its changes for the listener's benefit on more than one occasion. She gave her daughter a sidelong glance--partly of inquiry, partly of reproach--and turned to her work.