Miss Molly lowered her voice like a person coming to the frightening climax of a ghost story.  “Miss Abigail, they ain’t any young folks here any more!”

“What do you call the Pitkin girls!” demanded the other.

“They were the very last ones and they and their mother have decided they’ll move to Johnsonville this fall.”

Miss Abigail cried out in energetic disapproval, “What in the Lord’s world are the Pitkinses going to move away from Greenford for!  They belong here!”

Miss Molly marshaled the reasons with a sad swiftness, “There aren’t any music pupils left for the oldest one, the two next have got positions in the print mill and little Sarah is too old for the school here any more.”

Miss Abigail shook her head impatiently as though to brush away a troublesome gnat.  “How about the Leavitts?  There ought to be enough young ones in that or family to—­”

“They moved to Johnsonville last week, going to rent their house to city folks in the summer, the way all the rest here in the street do.  They didn’t want to go a bit.  Eliza felt dreadful about it, but what can they do?  Ezra hasn’t had enough carpentering to do in the last six months to pay their grocery bill, and down in Johnsonville they can’t get carpenters enough.  Besides, all the children’s friends are there, and they got so lonesome here winters.”

Miss Abigail quailed a little, but rallying, she brought out, “What’s the matter with the Bennetts?  The whole kit and b’iling of them came in here the other day to pester me asking about how I grew my lilies.”

“Why, Miss Abigail!  You don’t pay any more attention to village news!  They’ve been working in the mills for two years now, and only come home for two weeks in the summer like everybody else.”

The old woman stirred her weighty person wrathfully.  “Like everybody else!  Molly, you talk like a fool!  As if there was nobody lived here all the year around!”

“But it’s so! I don’t know what’s coming to Greenford!”

An imperative gesture from the older woman cut her short.  “Don’t chatter so, Molly!  If it’s true, that about the library, we’ve got to do something!”

The interview had ended in an agreement from her, after a struggle with the two passions of her life, to give up the tulip bulbs for which she had been saving so long, and spend the money for repairing the roof.  Miss Molly, having no money to give, since she was already much poorer than she could possibly be and live, agreed, according to Miss Abigail’s peremptory suggestion, to give her time, and keep the library open at least during the afternoons.

“You can do it, Molly, as well as not, for you don’t seem to have half the sewing you used to.”

“There’s nobody here any more to sew for—­” began the seamstress despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old woman’s jovial blustering, “No such kind of talk allowed in my garden!”