As for herself, strained as she was to her height of youthful enthusiasm for a great cause, as she judged it to be, clamping her feet to the topmost round of her ladder of difficulty, she would have essayed any honest labor with no hesitation whatever. But she thought of her father and mother and grandmother, and went on past the intelligence office. When she came to her old school-teacher's--Miss Mitchell's--house, she paused and hesitated a moment, then she went up the little path between the snow-banks to the front door, and rang the bell. The door was opened before the echoes had died away. Miss Mitchell had seen her coming, and hastened to open it. Miss Mitchell had not been teaching school for some years, having retired on a small competency of her savings. Her mortgage was paid, and there was enough for herself and her mother to live upon, with infinite care as to details of expenditure. Every postage-stamp and car-fare had its important part in the school-teacher's system of economy; but she was quite happy, and her large face wore an expression of perfect peace and placidity. She was a woman who was not tortured by any strong, ungratified desires. Her allotment of the gifts of the gods quite satisfied her. When Ellen entered the rather stuffy sitting-room--for Miss Mitchell and her mother were jealous of any breath of cold air after the scanty fire was kindled--it was like entering into a stratum of peace. It seemed quite removed from the turmoil of her own life. The school-teacher's old mother sat in her rocker close to the stove, stouter than ever, filling up her chair with those wandering curves and vague outlines which only the over-fleshy human form can assume. She looked as indefinite as a quivering jelly until one reached her face. That wore a fixedness of amiability which accentuated the whole like a high light. She had not seen Ellen for a long time, and she greeted her with delight. "Bless your heart!" said she, in her sweet, throaty, husky voice. "Go and get her some of them cookies, Fanny, do." The old woman's faculties were not in the least impaired, although she was very old, neither had her hands lost their cunning, for she still retained her skill in cookery, and prepared the simple meals for herself and daughter, seated in a high chair at the kitchen table to roll out pastry or the famous little cookies which Ellen remembered along with her childhood.