The schoolmaster took the letter, and read it aloud. It was a simple little message, full of contentment and love and a girl's new delight in life. When he had finished, the two older people busied themselves a moment without speaking, Solon in picking up a chip from the hearth, and Susan in mechanically smoothing the mammoth roses on the side of the carpetbag. "Well, I 'most wish we'd had her come home," said he at last, clearing his throat. "No, you don't either," answered Miss Susan promptly. "Not with this snow, an' comin' out of a house where it's het up, into cold beds an' all. Now I'm goin' to git you a mite o' pie an' some hot tea." She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began clearing up. "I'm worried to death to have him over there all by himself," said she. "S'pose he should be sick in the night!" "You'd got over," answered the schoolmaster easily. "Well, s'pose he couldn't git me no word?" "Oh, you'd know it! You 're that sort." Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent anxiety. She came back to her knitting. "How long has his wife been dead?" asked the schoolmaster. "Two year. He an' Jenny got along real well together, but sence September, when she went away, I guess he's found it pretty dull pickin'. I do all I can, but land! 't ain't like havin' a woman in the house from sunrise to set." "There's nothing like that," agreed the wise young schoolmaster. "Now let's play some more. Let's plan what we'd like to do to-morrow for all the folks we know, and let's not give them a thing they need, but just the ones they'd like." Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air. "Well," said she, "there's old Ann Wheeler that lives over on the turnpike. She don't want for nothin', but she keeps her things packed away up garret, an' lives like a pig." "'Sold her bed and lay in the straw.'" "That's it, on'y she won't sell nuthin'. I'd give her a house all winders, so 't she couldn't help lookin' out, an' velvet carpets 't she'd got to walk on." "Well, there's Cap'n Ben. The boys say he's out of his head a good deal now; he fancies himself at sea and in foreign countries."