"He's so slow at it that it looks like courting to me," observed the postmistress while scanning the morning's postcards to see if anything interesting was likely to happen in the neighborhood. "Alfinso thinks the world of Mr. Holt, and he's getting ten cents a day now. It's true Alfonso takes three of it away from him every night. He says five is due to him because he's a twin, but he only takes three cents because he don't do any work." "Alfonso's goin' to make a good business man when he grows up," said the post-mistress. It was half-past four in the afternoon, but in the short December days it was nearly as dark as midnight. A cheerful fire snapped in Jenny's highly polished kitchen stove. The yellow-painted floor with its braided rugs reflected the light of the kerosene lamp, the cat was asleep in the rocking-chair with the cretonne cushion, and Jenny sat by the table making out a crochet pattern from a magazine in front of her. She had changed into her afternoon dress of brown cashmere with pongee collar and cuffs and apron, so that she looked more than ever like Jenny Wren, Rufus Holt thought, as he came in from the tool-house with a lantern. "Alfinso is splitting and piling his kindling," he said. "He wants me to wait and go along home with him. Alfonso has told him there's a ghost between here and the corner. Gracious! Can any parlor in the world beat a kitchen for comfort when it's rigged out and kept like yours! (No, puss, I wouldn't have you move for the world, even if you offered to! I'll take a wooden chair!)" "The cat is spoiled," said Jenny, "and you look tired. You ought not to be doing rough work or you won't get to be yourself again." "I'm myself, right enough; in fact I never was so much myself since I was born. I'm not tired; the sight of you and this kitchen rests me clean through to the bone." Jenny changed color, but studied the crochet pattern with renewed care. "I don't miss my arm any more," Rufus continued, playing with her thread. "I've learned to do without it. I never thought I should, but I have, with a little help from a lady friend. I never was bitter about it like some. When you come to think of it, Miss Jenny Wren, it's wonderful how Almighty God has given us two of a kind in most things--on the outside, anyway. As to the inside furniture, the doctors have shown us how to get along without most of that. If we'd been started out with one eye, one ear, one arm and one leg, where would we have been nowadays?" "We've only one nose and one mouth," objected Jenny. "And how would we have looked with two?" laughed Rufus. "But that's not to the point. The house is finished, Jenny Wren, and what would you think of buying a few second-hand boards and letting me make the cow-shed more comfortable for winter?" This moment had to come. Jenny had been dreading it for days. There was a pause, then: "I'm going to sell the cow," she stammered.