“Do lay off your things, Miss Hall, and set awhile; I haven’t seen you for quite a spell.”

“Well, I don’t really know how to,” replied Miss Hitty.  “I don’t know but what everything will go to rack while I’m away.  My help is dreadful poor,—­I can’t calculate for her noway.  I shouldn’t wonder if she was settin’ in the keepin’-room this minute, looking at my best books.”

“Oh, I guess not, Miss Hitty.  Now do let me take off your bunnet, and make yourself easy.  Bridget can’t do much harm, and you’re such a stranger.”

“Well, I don’t know but what I will,—­there!  Don’t put yourself out for me, ’Tenty,—­I’ll set right here.  Dear me! what a clever house this is!  A’n’t you lonesome?  I do think it’s dreadful to be left all alone in this wicked world; it appears as though I couldn’t endure it noways, sometimes.”

“Why, Miss Hitty!  I’m sure you’re extreme well off.  Supposing, now, you had married a poor man, and had to work all your life,—­or a cross man, always a-findin’ fault, or”——­

“Well, that’s a consideration, re’lly.—­Now there’s Hanner-Ann’s husband,—­he’s always nag-naggin’ at her for something she’s done or ha’n’t done, the whole enduring time.  She’s real ailing, and he ha’n’t no patience,—­but then he’s got means, and she wants for nothing.  She had, to say, seven silk dresses, when I was there last time, and things to match,—­that’s something.—­But I’m sure you have to work as hard as though you was a minister’s wife, ’Tenty.  I don’t see how you do keep up.”

“Oh, I like work, Miss Hitty.  It kind of keeps my spirits up; and all the folks in Deerfield are as clever to me as though I belonged to ’em.  I have my health, and I don’t want for anything.  I think I’m as well off as the Queen.”

“You haven’t had no great of troubles,” groaned Miss Hitty.  “I’ve suffered so many ’flictions I’m most tired out; them is what wears on people, ’flictions by death.”

“I don’t know,” meekly answered ’Tenty; “I’ve had some, but I haven’t laid ’em up much.  I felt bad while they lasted; but I knew other folks’s was so much worse, I was kind of shy about feelin’ too bad over my troubles.”

“Well, you’ve got a real faculty at takin’ things easy; now I’m one of the feelin’ kind.  I set down often and often to knit, and get a-thinkin’ over times back, and things people said and did years ago, and how bad I felt, till I feel jest so ag’in, and I get a-cryin’ till it seems as though I should screech right out, and I can’t sleep, nor I can’t do nothing.”

“A’n’t you borrowin’ trouble a little bit, Miss Hitty?  I’ve kind of figured it out that it’s best to let the things that’s dead and done for stay so.  I don’t know as we’ve got any call to remember ’em.  ’The Lord requireth that which is past,’ it says in the Bible; and I’ve always looked upon that as a kind of a hint to men that it wa’n’t their business, but the Lord’s.”

“Oh, it’s all very well to talk, ’Tenty Scranton!—­talk, do!—­but ’tisn’t so mighty easy to practise on’t.”