There never was any use in anybody’s trying to speak while Miss Penelope was in the height of the excitement of making the morning coffee.  An opportunity for a word might possibly occur during the making of the coffee for dinner or supper.  Miss Penelope did not consider this function quite so solemn a ceremony at dinner or supper time.  Sometimes, at rare intervals, she had been known to allow the coffee for dinner or supper to be made by the cook in the kitchen.  But the making of the breakfast coffee was a very different and far more imposing ceremonial.  This must always be performed in the presence of the, entire assembled household, by her own hand, on the wide hearth in the great room of Cedar House.  To have permitted the cook to make the morning coffee in the kitchen, would have been in Miss Penelope’s eyes, to relegate a sacred rite to profane hands in an unconsecrated place.  Her own making of the morning coffee had indeed much of the solemnity of a religious ceremony—­or would have had, if those who looked on, had been unable to hear, or even slightly dull of hearing.  For the sound of Miss Penelope’s voice was charming when the listener could not hear what it said.  And her dulcet tone always ran through the whole performance like the faint, sweet echo of distant music.  But when the listener’s ears were keen, and he could hear the things that this kind, caressing voice was saying, the threats that it was uttering!—­They were alarming enough to curdle the blood of the little cup-bearers, black, brown, and yellow, who always flew like shuttles back and forth between the big house and the distant kitchen while Miss Penelope was making the breakfast coffee.  It required much flying of small dusky legs, to and fro, before the cold water was cold enough, the hot water hot enough, and the fresh egg fresh enough, to satisfy Miss Penelope that the coffee would be all that it should be.

On this particular morning the usual excitement had reached its crisis as Ruth came down the stairs.  There was usually a slight lull when the first slender and almost invisible column of steam arose from the long spout of the coffee-pot.  That was the most critical moment, and it now being safely past, Miss Penelope hastily sent away all the cup-bearers in a body.  But she still hovered anxiously over the pot, gravely considering how many minutes longer it should rest on its trivet over the glowing coals.  Hers was a quaint little figure.  She wore a queer little black dress, very short and narrow, made after some peculiar fashion of her own, and over it a queerer little cape of the same stuff.  Her cap on the other hand was singularly large and white, and the ruffle around her face was very wide and very stiff.  The snapping black eyes under the ruffle were never still, and the clawlike little hands were never at rest.  David in his idle way used to wonder what she worried about and fidgeted over in her sleep.  But it was hard to think of her asleep; it would have