But even a gay toilet cannot give delight for ever. As the last ribbon was settled, they heard the young men coming in from the barn, and the next half hour, while the beaux were at supper, threatened to be a heavy one with the girls. "Oh, what shall we do, huddled up here like chickens in a coop?" cried one. Salina, tell us a story; come, that's a good creature." "Do," said Mary, earnestly, "or they will be dull. Let me run down and help aunt Hannah." CHAPTER XLI THE HOUSEHOLD SACRIFICE. Like a human thing she looked on me, As I stood trembling there. For many a day those dreamy eyes Went with me everywhere. "Well," said Salina, seating herself on Mary Fuller's bed, "if you insist on it, I'll do my best, but I can't make up nothing, never could, and what I've got on my mind is the genuine truth." "That's right, tell us a true story, made up things are like novels, and they're so wicked," cried the girls, swarming around the strong-minded one full of curiosity, but arranging their ribbons and smoothing down their dresses all the time, like a flock of pigeons pluming themselves in the sunshine. "Come, now, Salina, begin, or the young fellers will be through supper." "Well," said Salina, settling herself comfortably on the bed, and deranging her attitude the next moment, "that sneaking constable who came into the barn among the first, and went out again so sly, has riled me up awfully. I've a nat'ral born hatred to all constables. What business had he there, I'd like to know?" "True enough," cried one of the girls, "An old married man! why don't he stay home with his wife and children? Nobody wants him." "I declare to man!" said Salina, "it made my blood bile to see him sneaking about with both hands in his pockets, whistling to himself, as if nobody was by; oh, I hate a constable like rank poison. They always put me in mind of old times--when I was a young gal a year or two ago." Here the girls looked at each other; none of them remembered the time when she had appeared a day younger than now. "Well, as I was a saying, when I was a gal, my father and mother moved from old Connecticut into the Lackawana valley in Pennsylvania, with ten little children, all younger than I was. They had lost everything, and went out into that dark, piny region to begin life agin. "Well, they got a patch of wild land, partly on credit, built a log-house, and went to work. Before the year was out father died, and we found it hard dragging to get along without crops, and deep in debt. We gave up everything to pay store debts, and should have felt as rich as kings, if we could only have raised what the law allowed us. But we had no barrel of beef and pork, which even the law leaves to a poor family, but we lived on rye and injun, with a little molasses when we couldn't get milk.