Widow Banks glanced at her daughter anxiously, then caught a glimpse of the smile that was hovering about her usually rather set lips, noticed the ruddy mane from which the hairpins rose in various attitudes of resentment, and glancing at the untouched task upon the table, gave a contented sigh and began to knit reminiscences of her own youth into the muffler she was fashioning for a missionary box. To be sure, she had planned a theological career for her only daughter. She was to have married a young theologue who had occupied the pulpit of the Pound Rock Church for a year and then gone to India, where by virtue of her experience as a teacher, Miranda was to help him convince the heathen, do credit to her religious training, and become a factor in the world. This plan belonged to seven years before when the girl was twenty, and it had not happened because the stubborn streak inherited from the deacon, stiffened Randy’s neck and perverted her judgment to the extent of preferring Hattertown to India, and declaring to her suitor and mother in one breath that if she ever felt a hankering for the heathen she could find plenty without leaving home. * * * * * When February comes the romance of winter is over in the hill country, and this long short month brings only the reality. It is a betwixt and between month, fully as trying as its opposite, August, that time of general stuffiness, flies, and limp linen. January had been a month of even snow and good sleighing, but a sleet storm had made the many downhill roads that converged at Hattertown well-nigh impassable with glittering ice; while in February, coughing and snuffling, as much a part of the month as St. Valentine’s Day, sadly interfered with discipline at the Crossroads Schoolhouse. Miranda, under pressure, allowed herself to confess for the first time, that seven years was quite long enough for a woman to sit upon the selfsame wooden chair, or wrestle with the constitutional peculiarities of a sheet-iron stove. This stove, having been second-hand upon its arrival, was now wearing three patches through the ill-fitted rivets of which smoke and gas filtered, obscuring the wall map of North America that was at least three states behind the times. The season and bad weather of course had some effect upon her point of view, for given June, open doors and windows, and a glimpse of the Moosatuck to draw the eye from the faded map, the most pressing of grievances would have vanished.