And Sin Saxon had gone away and told the girls that the old lady knew how to feather her nest better than any of them, and was sharp enough at a peck, too, upon occasion.

She found her again, one morning, sitting in the midst of a pile of homespun, which she was cutting up with great shears into boys’ blouses.

“There! that’s the noise that has disturbed me so!” cried the girl.  “I thought it was a hay-cutter or a planing-machine, or that you had got the asthma awfully.  I couldn’t write my letter for listening to it, and came round to ask what was the matter!—­Miss Craydocke, I don’t see why you keep the door bolted on your side.  It isn’t any more fair for you than for me; and I’m sure I do all the visiting.  Besides, it’s dangerous.  What if anything should happen in the night?  I couldn’t get in to help you.  Or there might be a fire in our room,—­I’m sure I expect nothing else.  We boiled eggs in the Etna the other night, and got too much alcohol in the saucer; and then, in the midst of the blaze and excitement, what should Madam Routh do but come knocking at the door!  Of course we had to put it in the closet, and there were all our muslin dresses,—­that weren’t hanging on the hooks in Maud’s room!  I assure you I felt like the man sitting on the safety-valve, standing with my back against the door, and my clothes spread out for fear she would see the flash under the crack.  For we’d nothing else but moonlight in the room.—­But now tell me, please, what are all these things?  Meal-bags?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Of course I do.  Now that I’ve got over my fright about your strangling with the asthma—­those shears did wheeze so!—­my curiosity is all alive again.”

“I’ve a cousin down in North Carolina teaching the little freedmen.”

“And she’s to have all these sacks to tie the naughty ones up in?  What a bright idea!  And then to whip them with rods as the Giant did his crockery, I suppose?  Or perhaps—­they can’t be petticoats!  Won’t she be warm, though?”

“May be, if you were to take one and sew up the seams, you would be able to satisfy yourself.”

“I?  Why, I never could put anything together!  I tried once, with a pair of hospital drawers, and they were like Sam Hyde’s dog, that got cut in two, and clapped together again in a hurry, two legs up and two legs down.  Miss Craydocke, why don’t you go down among the freedmen?  You haven’t half a sphere up here.  Nothing but Hobbs’s Location, and the little Hoskinses.”

“I can’t organize and execute.  Letitia can.  It’s her gift.  I can’t do great things.  I can only just carry round my little cup of cold water.”

“But it gets so dreadfully joggled in such a place as this!  Don’t we girls disturb you, Miss Craydocke?  I should think you’d be quieter in the other wing, or upstairs.”

“Young folks are apt to think that old folks ought to go a story higher.  But we’re content, and they must put up with us, until the proprietor orders a move.”